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
| Category | Weight this run | Grist | Teable | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 39 | 72 | Teable +33 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 63 | 75 | Teable +12 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 57 | 65 | Teable +8 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 62 | 62 | even |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 30 | 30 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 78 | 76 | Grist +2 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 61 | 64 | Teable +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -4 | -3 | |
| Total | 50.1 · D | 61 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Grist | Teable |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Grist Labs Inc. | Teable AI, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | https://docs.getgrist.com/api | https://app.teable.ai/api |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | 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 | 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 |
| Tools exposed | 34 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-10-06 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-05-25 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2019-04-01 | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 12k stars, 341 npm/wk, 240 PyPI/wk | 22k 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
- Connect through OAuth, not an API key. Ask for
doc:readalone for reading, and have the user pick Selected resources on the consent screen - Keep
doc.schema:writeoff unless needed. The docs say formula editing lets its holder read any data in the document whatever the access rules - Send requests for one document one at a time. The eleventh concurrent request gets 429, and no Retry-After header is documented
- Use
PUT /api/docs/{docId}/tables/{tableId}/recordswithrequireto add or update by key, so a retried write doesn't create a duplicate row - Use the
/recordsendpoints, not the deprecated/dataones, and split large writes to stay under the 1 MB body limit
Teable
- Send
Authorization: Bearer <token>tohttps://app.teable.ai/api. A 403 with coderestricted_resourceusually means a missing scope or a project outside the token's list - Page records with
takeof 100 at most. Personal keys created on Teable Cloud since 10 September 2026 are capped at 100 a request - Ask for totals from
/api/table/{tableId}/aggregation/row-count. Record lists stopped returning them by default on 2 September 2026 - Keep to 10 requests a second, back off on 429, and check before retrying a failed write because no idempotency key exists
- Pass
fieldKeyType=idso renamed fields don't break writes, and leavetypecastoff 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
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- Coda (Superhuman Docs) vs Teable
- Google Sheets API vs Grist
- Google Sheets API vs Teable
- Grist vs Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Graph workbook API)
- Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Graph workbook API) vs Teable
- Smartsheet API + MCP vs Teable
- Airtable vs Grist
- Airtable vs Teable
- Baserow vs Grist
- Baserow vs Teable
- Grist vs NocoDB
- Grist vs SeaTable
- Grist vs Smartsheet API + MCP
- NocoDB vs Teable
- SeaTable vs Teable
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/grist-vs-teable.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/grist.json·/api/v1/tools/teable.json - From a terminal
anchor compare grist teable(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "grist", "b": "teable"}at/mcp, no key