# Baserow vs SeaTable

> SeaTable scores 66.3 (B) on agent readiness against Baserow's 63.6 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Baserow leads on payments & pricing. Both do sheets records. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserow-vs-seatable
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserow-vs-seatable.md (~2,350 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserow-vs-seatable.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserow-vs-seatable.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

SeaTable scores 66.3 (B) on agent readiness against Baserow's 63.6 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Baserow leads on payments & pricing. 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
- SeaTable: grade B, 66.3/100, rank #241 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/seatable.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/seatable.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:
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 30

Also in its favour:
- Open source

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

### SeaTable (B)

Good for: Teams that want typed tables hosted in Germany or on their own server, with an agent reading and writing rows through a per-base token or the official MCP server.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 59 against 54
- Transparency & trust, 75 against 65

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine

Watch for: Monthly API call quotas by plan, 3,000 for a whole Free team, 10,000 per user on Plus and 50,000 per user on Enterprise


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Baserow | SeaTable | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 65 | 69 | SeaTable +4 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 77 | 81 | SeaTable +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 74 | SeaTable +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 54 | 59 | SeaTable +5 |
| 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 | 76 | SeaTable +4 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 75 | SeaTable +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63.6 · B** | **66.3 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Baserow | SeaTable |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Baserow B.V. | SeaTable GmbH |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.baserow.io` | `https://cloud.seatable.io` |
| Transports | HTTP, SSE (legacy) | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | API 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 | Proprietary cloud service under the Terms of Service for SeaTable Cloud. The MCP server is MIT. SeaTable Server Enterprise Edition is licensed under an EULA |
| Tools exposed | 7 | 21 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.seatable/seatable` |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-09-04 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | no date given |
| 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 | 103 npm/wk, 1.7k 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.

**SeaTable.** API tokens are limited to one base and to read-only or read-write, and the official MCP server marks every tool as read-only or destructive. The Free plan allows 3,000 API calls a month in total, and base calls are capped at 200 a minute. The status page showed the base API degraded for 0.77 per cent of 30 days.

## 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`

### SeaTable

1. Create an API token for the one base with read-only permission unless writes are needed, then exchange it at `/api/v2.1/dtable/app-access-token/` for a Base-Token
2. Renew the Base-Token before it expires after 3 days, and send it as `Authorization: Bearer` to `/api-gateway/api/v2/dtables/{base_uuid}/`
3. Read `x-ratelimit-remaining` and `x-ratelimit-reset` on every base call. SeaTable Cloud allows 200 base calls a minute and answers 429 with no body
4. Batch writes to save the monthly quota. One call appends or updates up to 1,000 rows over REST and 100 over MCP
5. Over MCP, prefer `update_rows` and `delete_rows` to `query_sql`, which can run UPDATE and DELETE, and call `get_schema` before writing

## Questions

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

SeaTable scores 66.3 (B) on agent readiness against Baserow's 63.6 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Baserow leads on payments & pricing.

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

Both need an API key.

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

Yes. Baserow has a hosted endpoint at https://api.baserow.io and SeaTable at https://cloud.seatable.io.

### Are Baserow and SeaTable open source?

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). No open-source release is listed for SeaTable.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Baserow or SeaTable

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- [Baserow vs Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Graph workbook API)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserow-vs-microsoft-excel-graph.md)
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- [Airtable vs SeaTable](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/airtable-vs-seatable.md)
- [Baserow vs Coda (Superhuman Docs)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserow-vs-coda.md)
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- [NocoDB vs SeaTable](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nocodb-vs-seatable.md)
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