# Baserow vs Grist

> Baserow scores 63.6 (B) on agent readiness against Grist's 50.1 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Grist leads on security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do sheets records. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserow-vs-grist
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserow-vs-grist.md (~2,450 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserow-vs-grist.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserow-vs-grist.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-08

Baserow scores 63.6 (B) on agent readiness against Grist's 50.1 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Grist leads on security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do sheets records.

- Baserow: grade B, 63.6/100, rank #306 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/baserow.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/baserow.json
- Grist: grade D, 50.1/100, rank #597 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/grist.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/grist.json

## Which one, for what

### Baserow (B)

Good for: Teams that want Airtable-style typed tables they can also self-host, with row-level reads and writes by an agent through table-scoped tokens or a small MCP tool set.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 65 against 39
- Schema & documentation, 77 against 63
- Agent ergonomics, 72 against 57
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 30

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where Grist loses 4 points for them

Watch for: The MCP endpoint's key sits in the URL path, and the docs say it grants full access to modify data in the workspace

### Grist (D)

Good for: Teams that want a relational spreadsheet with Python formulas and per-document OAuth grants for an agent, or that need to self-host.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 62 against 54
- Maintenance & community, 78 against 72

Watch for: No status page was found. status.getgrist.com redirects to a signup form, and the site footer and help centre link to none


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Baserow | Grist | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 65 | 39 | Baserow +26 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 77 | 63 | Baserow +14 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 57 | Baserow +15 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 54 | 62 | Grist +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 30 | Baserow +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 72 | 78 | Grist +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 61 | Baserow +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -4 | |
| **Total** | | **63.6 · B** | **50.1 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Baserow | Grist |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Baserow B.V. | Grist Labs Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.baserow.io` | `https://docs.getgrist.com/api` |
| Transports | HTTP, SSE (legacy) | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT for the core, including the REST API and the MCP server. Code under premium/ and enterprise/ is source-available under Baserow's own licences and needs a paid subscription in production. Docs are CC BY-SA 4.0 | Apache-2.0 for the community edition in gristlabs/grist-core. The full edition, which adds the MCP server, the OAuth server and audit log streaming, is proprietary and needs an activation key after a 30-day trial. Docs are CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| Tools exposed | 7 | 34 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-09-28 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2019-04-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 6.1k stars | 12k stars, 341 npm/wk, 240 PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**Baserow.** Database tokens are limited to chosen tables and to create, read, update or delete, and the REST API has a public OpenAPI description with batch calls of 200 rows. The MCP server authenticates with a key in its URL, runs over SSE only and has no read-only mode. Cloud requests are capped at 10 at a time.

**Grist.** OAuth tokens carry seven scopes, can be limited to chosen documents and expire after an hour, and the REST API has a public OpenAPI file with an add-or-update call. No status page, SLA terms, DPA or security.txt was found, and the docs say the hosted service has no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audit.

## Before you call either

### Baserow

1. Create a database token with only the tables and operations needed. It can't change tables or fields, which need a JWT from `/api/user/token-auth/`
2. Send `Authorization: Token YOUR_DATABASE_TOKEN`, and add `user_field_names=true` or rows come back keyed as `field_123`
3. Use the `/batch/` endpoints for up to 200 rows a call, and keep to 10 requests in flight on Baserow Cloud
4. Treat the MCP URL as a password. Keep it out of logs and version control, and delete the endpoint to revoke it
5. Over MCP, call `get_table_schema` before `create_rows` or `update_rows`, and page `list_table_rows` with `page` and `size`

### Grist

1. Connect through OAuth, not an API key. Ask for `doc:read` alone for reading, and have the user pick Selected resources on the consent screen
2. Keep `doc.schema:write` off unless needed. The docs say formula editing lets its holder read any data in the document whatever the access rules
3. Send requests for one document one at a time. The eleventh concurrent request gets 429, and no Retry-After header is documented
4. Use `PUT /api/docs/{docId}/tables/{tableId}/records` with `require` to add or update by key, so a retried write doesn't create a duplicate row
5. Use the `/records` endpoints, not the deprecated `/data` ones, and split large writes to stay under the 1 MB body limit

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Baserow or Grist?

Baserow scores 63.6 (B) on agent readiness against Grist's 50.1 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Grist leads on security & auth and maintenance & community.

### Do Baserow and Grist need an API key?

Baserow needs an API key. Grist takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Baserow and Grist without installing anything?

Yes. Baserow has a hosted endpoint at https://api.baserow.io and Grist at https://docs.getgrist.com/api.

### Are Baserow and Grist open source?

Yes. Baserow is open source (MIT for the core, including the REST API and the MCP server. Code under premium/ and enterprise/ is source-available under Baserow's own licences and needs a paid subscription in production. Docs are CC BY-SA 4.0). Grist is open source (Apache-2.0 for the community edition in gristlabs/grist-core. The full edition, which adds the MCP server, the OAuth server and audit log streaming, is proprietary and needs an activation key after a 30-day trial. Docs are CC BY-SA 4.0).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserow-vs-grist.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserow-vs-grist.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "baserow", "b": "grist"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare baserow grist`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/baserow.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/grist.json

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