Head to head · Sheets records · October 2026 research run

Grist vs Teable

Teable scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Grist's 50.1 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Both do sheets records.

Which one, for what

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.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

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

Teable C

Good for Teams that want Airtable-style typed tables on PostgreSQL that they can also self-host, with an agent reading and writing records through tokens limited by scope and project, or through the vendor's CLI and skill.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 72 against 39
  • Schema & documentation, 75 against 63
  • Agent ergonomics, 65 against 57

Watch for

The OpenAPI file documents only 200 and 201 responses for nearly every operation, and the error page lists HTTP statuses without a table of error codes

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGristTeableEdge
Reliability16%203972Teable +33
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26375Teable +12
Agent ergonomics13%16.25765Teable +8
Security & auth14%17.56262even
Payments & pricing10%12.53030even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87876Grist +2
Transparency & trust7%8.86164Teable +3
Negative events≤15-4-3
Total50.1 · D61 · C

Facts side by side

FactGristTeable
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorGrist Labs Inc.Teable AI, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://docs.getgrist.com/apihttps://app.teable.ai/api
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-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 4.0AGPL-3.0 with additional brand terms for the backend and web app, MIT for the packages directory. Enterprise functions and the @teable/cli package (ISC on npm) are built in a private repository
Tools exposed34none
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-09-282026-10-06
Terms last updatedno date given2026-05-25
Privacy policy last updated2019-04-012026-10-01
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity12k stars, 341 npm/wk, 240 PyPI/wk22k stars, 179 npm/wk

Verdicts

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.

Teable

Personal access tokens and OAuth tokens carry per-action scopes, and tokens can be limited to chosen spaces and projects. The public OpenAPI file covers 841 operations. Error responses beyond 200 and 201 are missing from that file, no idempotency keys were found, and the cloud allows 10 requests a second on every plan.

Before you call either

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

Teable

  1. Send Authorization: Bearer <token> to https://app.teable.ai/api. A 403 with code restricted_resource usually means a missing scope or a project outside the token's list
  2. Page records with take of 100 at most. Personal keys created on Teable Cloud since 10 September 2026 are capped at 100 a request
  3. Ask for totals from /api/table/{tableId}/aggregation/row-count. Record lists stopped returning them by default on 2 September 2026
  4. Keep to 10 requests a second, back off on 429, and check before retrying a failed write because no idempotency key exists
  5. Pass fieldKeyType=id so renamed fields don't break writes, and leave typecast off unless values need converting

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Grist or Teable?

Teable scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Grist's 50.1 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories.

Do Grist and Teable need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Grist and Teable without installing anything?

Yes. Grist has a hosted endpoint at https://docs.getgrist.com/api and Teable at https://app.teable.ai/api.

Are Grist and Teable open source?

Yes. 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). Teable is open source (AGPL-3.0 with additional brand terms for the backend and web app, MIT for the packages directory. Enterprise functions and the `@teable/cli` package (ISC on npm) are built in a private repository).

Other comparisons with Grist or Teable

Machine-readable

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