Attio vs Airtable: Best Startup CRM (2025)

If you’re a running a startup, chances are you need a CRM. Traditionally, players like Salesforce and HubSpot have dominated the space, but smart startups are starting to look for more modern, lightweight solutions. In the last few years, Attio and Airtable have arisen as two of the hottest startup CRM options out there.

We use both Attio and Airtable internally (and love them!), so below we’ll break down exactly how they differ. While both are great options, Attio and Airtable are fundamentally unique, so it’s important to understand each before making a decision. Whichever you choose, Attio and Airtable can each make you 10x more efficient, so you’re on the right path!

What is Attio

Attio is considered the “next gen of CRM”. Founded in 2019, Attio’s raised over $31M and solidified themselves as the up-and-coming CRM to watch. The core premise of Attio is that it offers powerful CRM functionality like Salesforce, but with a modern user experience like Airtable or Notion.

What is Airtable

Airtable is a mix between a spreadsheet and a database. The ultra-flexible platform lets you customize spreadsheets into full-blown apps ranging from CRMs to task managers and content calendars. While Airtable is not only a CRM, it is commonly used as a CRM by startups since it’s so lightweight and customizable. 

Main difference between Attio and Airtable

Below we’ll go into many details, but if you take away one thing from this article let it be this:

• Attio is a CRM
• Airtable is a spreadsheet

While Attio is much more flexible than traditional CRMs, it’s still a CRM. This is great because it means Attio has many powerful contact management features out-of-the-box. That being said, it also means Attio is opinionated about how you should use it.

While Airtable has CRM templates, it is fundamentally not a CRM. This is great because it enables Airtable to be ultra customizable and easy to use. That being said, it also means Airtable will never have all the features you might want for customer management.

As we dive into specific details, keep this high-level difference in mind.

Hi there, you’re reading the Whalesync blog. Whalesync is a workflow automation tool that makes editing Webflow, Supabase, or Attio data directly from Notion or Airtable really easy. Try it today!

Head-to-head comparison

Now that you understand the high-level difference between Attio and Airtable, let’s break down their differences bit by bit. Below we’ll compare the two across:

1. Onboarding
2. Email
3. Pricing
4. User experience
5. Automations

Onboarding

Attio

Attio has a really slick onboarding experience that is built to make self-serve feel magical. As you get into the product, they walk you through setup and guide you to key actions like Lists and calendar syncing.

Compared to Airtable, there’s a bit less customization to do in Attio since every Attio instance has three default objects:

• Companies
• People
• Deals

Attio has a specific track they are trying to get you on during onboarding. You can customize this to your liking, but fundamentally it is set up to be a CRM. 

Airtable

Since Airtable is such an open-ended tool, they do their best to provide templates and structure as you get started. Recently, they launched an AI “Cobuilder” that builds a base for you. With Cobuilder and their many CRM templates, you can get the structure of a CRM built into Airtable in minutes.

Where Airtable really shines is that it’s extremely easy to customize once you’ve got your basics in place. In an Airtable CRM, you can add new fields or entire new objects (aka tables) with just two clicks.

Winner: Tie

Attio and Airtable both do a really great job with onboarding. Attio has a bit steeper learning curve if you’re brand new to CRMs but gives you more power out-of-the-box. Airtable is instantly recognizable as a spreadsheet, can be a bit trickier to get to full CRM functionality. Which is better really comes down to preference.

Email

Attio

Seamless email integration is an area where Attio really shines. One of the first things Attio asks you to do is connect your email and calendar. They then instantly pull all your contacts and interactions into your CRM. This robust email/calendar sync is a simple but incredibly powerful feature.

Additionally, Attio has email sending built right into the product. When you have a contact in your CRM you want to reach, you can literally compose an email right from Attio. This saves us a ton of time as compared to clicking back and forth between Gmail.

More recently, Attio even added Email Sequences into the product if you’re on their Pro plan ($69/user/mo). While it’s not yet quite as robust dedicated sequencing tools like Apollo, the feature is on its way there.

Airtable

Since Airtable isn’t really a CRM, it doesn’t quite have a concept of emails in the same way Attio does. That being said, you can add a “send email with SendGrid” button to Airtable to fire off emails or set up an automation, but it requires some work.

Winner: Attio

Overall, Attio blows Airtable out of the water when it comes to email marketing. Attio’s email integrations are incredibly robust and built seamlessly into the product. Power users of Airtable can find some workarounds, but Airtable simply doesn’t have anything comparable in this area.

Pricing

Attio

Attio has a freemium, self-serve model that prices per user. Their free plan gives you up to 3 seats and most of their core functionality.

If you need custom objects or email sequencing, you’ll need to upgrade to one of their paid tiers which are $34/user/mo and $69/user/mo respectively.

Ultimately, Attio is priced in line with other startup CRMs and can be significantly cheaper than more enterprise focused CRMs like Salesforce.

Airtable

Airtable also has a self-serve, freemium model that prices per seat. Their free tier gives you access to Airtable’s core functionality but with a limit of only 1,000 records per base. Additionally, if you’re using Airtable as a CRM, you may eventually want to upgrade to their team plan ($24/user/mo) to get access to their Extensions feature.

Winner: Airtable

Attio and Airtable do such different things that it’s hard to compare their pricing head-to-head. If you’re comparing strictly on their basic CRM functionality, Airtable lets you accomplish this for $24/user/mo whereas Attio’s lowest paid tier is $34/user/mo. For that reason, Airtable has the slight edge.

User Experience

Attio

Attio is known for its “Airtable or Notion-like” user experience. A la Airtable, Attio is built around a spreadsheet interface. When you’re looking at contacts or deals, you can quickly switch between a spreadsheet view and a kanban board in Attio. Compared to legacy CRMs like Salesforce, Attio’s user experience is a massive improvement.

Airtable

Airtable is one of the pioneers of the modern spreadsheet user experience. Their tables and databases are infinitely customizable with almost zero learning curve. Anyone can jump into Airtable and pretty quickly have a sense for how it works. Airtable has main more advanced features like Automations and Interfaces that can be a bit trickier, but at its core, they have an incredibly accessible user experience.

Winner: Airtable

While Attio is light years ahead of other CRMs, it’s still not quite at Airtable-level user experience. Working with spreadsheets in Airtable is just slightly easier. Adding new fields is just a bit more seamless and large record counts seem to load just a bit faster in Airtable.

Automations

Attio

Attio automations let you (you guessed it) automate actions within Attio. For example, you might create a flow that enrolls all new contacts in an email sequences or automatically researches company details with AI. Attio’s automation flow is beautifully designed and intuitive to use. It’s alos very obvious it was designed with AI in mind.

Airtable

Airtable automations let you automate actions with your Airtable base. We made a video tutorial on how to use Airtable automations, but like Attio, they’re intuitive and can be picked up easily. Like Attio, Airtable’s automations are based on a classic trigger/action model and include AI blocks.

Winner: Tie!

Attio and Airtable both have really impressive automations features. They’re both based on the same trigger/action model and both offer powerful AI functionality. You don’t need to be a power user to benefit from automations in either tool.

Should you use Airtable or Attio as your CRM?

So which one should you choose? At the end of the day, it all comes down to what you value. If you’re looking for a true CRM with powerful features like calendar sync and email, choose Attio. If you’re looking for something ultra lightweight you can start using in minutes, choose Airtable.

In my opinion, if you’re a 1 or 2 person startup, just open up Airtable and get to it. At that stage, speed is most important and you can get away with doing things that don’t scale. If your team has more than 10 people or you’re hiring your first sales person, then it’s probably time to switch to Attio. You’re now getting to a stage where the benefit of true CRM can be massive.

Whichever you choose, you’re in good hands with two amazing products. And of course, you can always get the best of both worlds by using Whalesync to sync Attio with Airtable ;)