Baserow

# Fix list: Baserow

From Anchor Terminal's listing at https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/baserow, the October 2026 research run, assessed 8 October 2026. Grade B, 63.6 out of 100.

This is everything the published grade says the listing lacks, the biggest possible gain to the total first. It comes from the reason given for each score, the checklist each category was scored against (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist), the provenance checks, the deductions, what we couldn't check and what the review panel asked for. A fix counts at the next check, once it's public.

For a coding agent working on Baserow: work through the items below in the product, its docs and its public pages. Each category gives the reason for its score, with the points each checklist item earned, and the checklist itself, so the gap is the items that earned less than their points. Change the product, not the wording, and keep a note of what you changed and where it's published.

## 1. Security & auth, 54 out of 100, up to 8.1 more on the total

Why it scored 54: Database tokens are limited to one workspace, chosen tables and create, read, update or delete, and can be regenerated or deleted, which would earn 30. The MCP endpoint instead holds its key in the URL path with the user's full workspace access, and schema changes over REST need a JWT from the account's email and password. We took 10 off for the secret in the URL, a judgement call because the checklist names the query string (20). Read-only tokens per table on REST. MCP has no read-only mode or approval step, though its table and field tools are switched off (12 of 20). Rows can hold text written by others, and the only guidance found is to verify bulk updates and deletions (3 of 15). Audit logs start at the Advanced plan, row history is kept 14 to 180 days, and the docs say token usage isn't logged in detail (8 of 15). SECURITY.md gives a reporting email, and the FAQ claims SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA. No security.txt, bug bounty or published advisory found (11 of 20).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-security):

- 0 to 30, the credential model. 30 for OAuth 2.1 with scopes, or scoped and revocable keys with rotation. 20 for plain revocable API keys. 10 for one all-powerful key. 10 off when a secret can travel in a URL query string as a documented option.
- 0 to 20, read-only or least-privilege modes, and confirmation or approval for destructive actions.
- 0 to 15, prompt-injection posture where the tool returns untrusted content (documented mitigations or guidance). A tool that returns no untrusted content gets 10.
- 0 to 15, audit logs or per-call visibility for the operator.
- 0 to 20, a security programme. security.txt or a disclosure policy, a bug bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001, advisories handled in public.

Models are read for retention, whether API data trains models (and whether that's off by default), zero-retention options and certifications. Frameworks for telemetry defaults, approval hooks, guardrails and sandboxing.

## 2. Payments & pricing, 40 out of 100, up to 7.5 more on the total

Why it scored 40: Graded on the hosted cloud. No x402, MPP or L402 found (0). Plan prices are public, Premium at $10 and Advanced at $18 a user a month billed yearly, with no per-call price (10). A Free plan with 3,000 rows per workspace. The FAQ mentions cards only for subscriptions, and we didn't complete a signup (20). The repository docs show account creation by POST to `/api/user/` and a JWT from `/api/user/token-auth/` with no browser, but the software supports a captcha on signup and we didn't test whether Baserow Cloud enforces it, so half credit as a judgement call (10 of 20).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-payments):

The published rubric, also on the [x402 page](https://www.anchorterminal.com/x402/).

- 40, a machine payment protocol (x402, MPP or L402) on the tool's own endpoints. 10 to 30 when it covers only some endpoints or only goes through a third party, and the note says which.
- 20, per-call or per-unit pricing published without a login. 10 for public plan-only pricing, 0 for "contact sales" or prices behind a login.
- 20, a free tier or trial that doesn't need a card.
- 20, autonomous onboarding, meaning an agent can get access without a person signing up in a browser (keyless use, x402, a programmatic key API).

Payment platforms and agent wallets rarely charge for their own API over a machine protocol, so the first line has steps for them, and the highest one that applies counts. 40 when x402, MPP or L402 runs on all their own endpoints, 30 when it runs on part of their own API, 25 when their merchants can accept one, 20 for running a facilitator, 15 for paying as a buyer, and 0 when the only protocol is their own. Merchant acceptance sits above a facilitator because the platform's own customers can charge agents through it, while a facilitator settles for sellers who wire up the protocol themselves. The counter-argument (a facilitator does more for the protocol as a whole) has a point. Each note says which step applied.

Open-source software you run yourself is scored on its hosted or paid option if it has one. A free, self-hosted package with nothing to buy gets 20, 20 and 20 for the last three lines, and 0 to 40 for the first only if it ships a payment protocol.

## 3. Reliability, 65 out of 100, up to 7 more on the total

Why it scored 65: Graded on Baserow Cloud's REST API and built-in MCP server, with the hosted lines. Better Stack status page at status.baserow.org with five components and 90 days of history (20). Backend API at 99.981 per cent over 90 days, with 6 minutes down on 1 October 2026, degraded real-time and MCP performance on 8 September and an error on public views on 23 September, all minor (20). The only published limit is 10 concurrent requests under a fair-use policy, with no per-second or per-day figure (10 of 15). The docs ask for retries with exponential backoff, but no Retry-After header or idempotency key is documented and the OpenAPI description has no 429 response for row calls (5 of 15). No SLA found, and the terms describe a best-efforts service (0). The REST API is generally available and the MCP docs carry no beta label (10).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-reliability):

Hosted APIs, MCP servers, models and platforms.

- 20, a public status page with component history (Statuspage, Instatus, BetterStack or the vendor's own).
- 0 to 30, the incident record for the last 90 days on that page. 30 for a clean record or trivial incidents only, 20 for minor incidents only, 10 for one major outage (an hour or more of a core API down, or errors across the board), 0 for several. 5 when there's no history we could read, and the note says so.
- 15, rate limits documented with numbers.
- 15, documented 429 or overload handling (Retry-After, backoff guidance), and idempotency keys or safe-retry guidance where writes are involved.
- 10, an SLA published for any paid tier.
- 10, the surface agents use is generally available, not beta or preview.

Local packages, SDKs, frameworks and stdio MCP servers.

- 20, installs from an official package with supported runtimes stated.
- 25, a public CI and test suite, passing on the default branch.
- 0 to 25, open crash or regression issues relative to activity (25 for few and handled, 0 for many, old and unanswered).
- 15, semver discipline and breaking changes called out in a changelog.
- 15, version 1.0 or later, or declared stable.

Protocols are read from their reference implementations, the public facilitators or servers, spec stability and test vectors.

## 4. Agent ergonomics, 72 out of 100, up to 4.6 more on the total

Why it scored 72: The MCP server has 7 compact tools (25). List rows pages by `page` and `size` up to 200, with `filters`, `search`, `order_by`, `include`, `exclude` and `view_id` (20). Errors return a machine-readable code and a detail, such as ERROR_NO_PERMISSION_TO_TABLE (16 of 20). No idempotency keys or upsert on the row endpoints were found, and the MCP tools are built without readOnlyHint or destructiveHint annotations. Batch calls of 200 rows reduce the number of writes to retry (5 of 20). Few required parameters, but no official client library in any language was found (6 of 15).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-ergonomics):

- 0 to 25, context cost. For MCP, the number and size of the tool definitions (25 for ten or fewer compact tools, 15 for 11 to 30, 5 for more than 30, plus up to 10 back for toolsets, dynamic loading or read-only subsets). For APIs, whether responses can be sized (field selection, limits, summaries).
- 20, pagination, filtering and output-size controls.
- 20, actionable, documented error responses, codes and messages an agent can recover from.
- 20, idempotency or safe retries, and for MCP the `readOnlyHint` and `destructiveHint` annotations.
- 15, sensible defaults, few required parameters, and official SDKs in at least two languages.

Models are read for tool use, structured output, prompt caching, context length, batch and SDKs. Frameworks for how much code and how many defaults a tool-calling agent with MCP needs.

## 5. Schema & documentation, 77 out of 100, up to 3.7 more on the total

Why it scored 77: Public OpenAPI 3.0.3 description with 312 paths and 424 operations, and every MCP tool has a JSON Schema generated from a typed model (25). llms.txt exists but links to HTML marketing and docs pages, with no Markdown docs found (5 of 10). Endpoint descriptions are long and specific, and MCP tool descriptions say which tool to call first (15 of 20). Parameters are typed, but `filters` is a JSON string, row bodies depend on the table, and MCP rows are untyped objects keyed by field name (8 of 15). Curl examples in the docs and an enum of error codes on each response, 260 distinct codes in all (12 of 15). The description carries the release version and the changelog has Breaking API changes sections, with no API version in the path (12 of 15).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-schema):

APIs and MCP servers.

- 25, a machine-readable contract (a public OpenAPI file or similar; for MCP, typed JSON Schema inputs on every tool).
- 10, llms.txt or Markdown docs served for agents.
- 0 to 20, descriptions that say what a tool is for, when to use it and when not to, read from the tool definitions in the source or the API reference.
- 0 to 15, typed inputs with enums, constraints and required fields, and no free-form JSON blobs.
- 0 to 15, examples and documented error responses.
- 15, versioning and a public changelog.

Models are read from the API reference, the OpenAPI file, llms.txt, the structured-output and tool-use docs and the model cards. Frameworks from docs a model can follow, typed interfaces, examples and the API reference.

## 6. Transparency & trust, 65 out of 100, up to 3.1 more on the total

Made of editorial 49, provenance 80.

Why it scored 65: The core, including the REST API and MCP server, is MIT. Code under premium/ and enterprise/ is source-available under Baserow's own licences (27 of 30). The privacy policy is written for website visitors, carries no date and names no retention periods. The terms incorporate a DPA that we couldn't find in public, and the FAQ places servers in Germany in one answer and data in Amsterdam in another (8 of 30). A deprecations page exists but lists only PostgreSQL versions. Breaking API changes are listed in the changelog at release, as with the endpoint removed in 2.4.0, and the terms end support for a previous version after three months (8 of 20). Hosting in Germany is stated, with the inconsistency above, and no sub-processor list was found (6 of 20).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-transparency):

- 0 to 30, source availability and licence clarity. 30 for open source under an OSI licence, 15 for closed with clear terms, 0 for unclear terms.
- 0 to 30, data handling and retention statements that agree with each other (privacy policy, DPA, retention periods, subprocessors).
- 0 to 20, a deprecation policy or notices with dates.
- 0 to 20, telemetry disclosed with an opt-out (local software), or subprocessors and data locations disclosed (hosted).

The other half of Transparency and trust is the provenance score, computed from checked facts (below). The category score is the mean of the two.

Provenance checks not met in full (half of this category, computed from checked facts):

- Domain age: baserow.io, registered 2019-01-19 (7 years) (11 of 15)
- Terms of service: read, states 3 of the 7 things a reader expects (6.6 of 10)
- Privacy policy: read, states 5 of the 8 things a reader expects (7.8 of 10)
- security.txt: not found (0 of 10)

## 7. Maintenance & community, 72 out of 100, up to 2.5 more on the total

Why it scored 72: Release 2.4.0 on 29 September 2026, 9 days before the check (30). Four releases in the last 90 days, 2.3.2, 2.3.3, 2.3.4 and 2.4.0 (20). The community forum shows staff replies within a day or two on recent threads. The GitHub issues page counted 1,199 open issues, and we didn't read reply times there (15 of 25). No official client library, and the only Baserow entry in the official MCP registry is a third party's (0 of 15). The repository has CI and daily backend test workflows and the changelog records dependency upgrades for security fixes. We didn't read the current CI result (7 of 10).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-maintenance):

- 0 to 30, time since the last release, or the last published model or API change for a closed service. 30 within 30 days, 20 within 90, 10 within 180, 0 older.
- 20, at least three releases or dated changelog entries in the last 90 days.
- 0 to 25, responsiveness. Issues and pull requests answered on GitHub (the open issues and how recent the replies are). For closed services, a public changelog and a support or community channel that answers, 0 to 15.
- 15, presence in the official MCP registry under a verified namespace (MCP servers), or current official SDKs (APIs and models).
- 10, package health, current dependencies and CI.

Models are read for deprecation notice periods and model churn rather than release counts.

## What we couldn't check

What we couldn't read counted as absent. Publishing it on a page a plain HTTP fetch can read (not only in a browser) lets the next check count it.

- unchecked: whether signup on Baserow Cloud asks for a card, an email confirmation or a captcha. We didn't create an account, and the half credit for onboarding without a browser rests on the repository's API docs
- unchecked: the MCP server's live tool list on Baserow Cloud. The 7 tools come from the docs page and from the source at commit 0af9be4, which may be ahead of the cloud
- unchecked: reply times on GitHub issues and the current CI result. The GitHub API refused us, and the count of 1,199 open issues is read from the issues page
- unchecked: a SOC 2 report or HIPAA attestation. The FAQ states them and no report or auditor was named on the pages read
- No SLA, security.txt, bug bounty, sub-processor list, public DPA text, retention period, Retry-After header, idempotency key or official client library was found in the reviewed pages
- The privacy policy is written for website visitors and has no date. It's recorded in provenance because it is the only one and covers account registration
- The FAQ says servers are in Germany and also that all user data is stored in Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Release 2.4.0 removed `/api/workspaces/{id}/settings/generative-ai/` with notice only in that release's changelog. No deduction was taken because the endpoint is outside the row API and MCP server graded here
- The MCP key travels in the URL path, not the query string the checklist names. The 10-point deduction is a judgement call
- The lead was right on vendor, URL and interface, with one correction. Tokens are limited per workspace and table, not per database

## Weaknesses

- The MCP endpoint's key sits in the URL path, and the docs say it grants full access to modify data in the workspace
- The MCP server speaks only the older SSE transport, with no OAuth, no read-only mode and no tool annotations
- Table and field changes over REST need a JWT obtained with the account's email and password, since database tokens cover rows only
- No SLA, security.txt, sub-processor list or published DPA text was found, and the privacy policy carries no date or retention periods
- No official client library was found, and Baserow isn't in the official MCP registry under its own namespace

## What costs an agent a turn today

The notes we give agents before they call it. Each one is a workaround an agent shouldn't need.

- 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/`
- Send `Authorization: Token YOUR_DATABASE_TOKEN`, and add `user_field_names=true` or rows come back keyed as `field_123`
- Use the `/batch/` endpoints for up to 200 rows a call, and keep to 10 requests in flight on Baserow Cloud
- Treat the MCP URL as a password. Keep it out of logs and version control, and delete the endpoint to revoke it
- Over MCP, call `get_table_schema` before `create_rows` or `update_rows`, and page `list_table_rows` with `page` and `size`

## When it's done

Send what changed and where it's published as a dispute (https://www.anchorterminal.com/builders/#disputes, or `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/contact` with `"kind": "dispute"`). Disputes are answered in public, and the listing is checked again by the same checklist. Paying for an audit or a listing claim changes nothing here.