A: Our main philosophical differences with Airtable are about data ownership and flexibility in presenting data.

Regarding data ownership, there is no data lock-in with Grist. Tables can be exported individually as a CSV, exported to Google Drive, or you can download the entire relational structure as a .grist file, which is a SQLite file. Your documents are automatically backed up, and if you'd like to self host Grist, it is also open source. https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-core

Regarding flexibility in UI, there are three main features that set Grist apart.

1. Each page in a Grist document is highly customizable. Like in Airtable, data can be expressed as tables and cards, but in Grist, it is easier to customize the layout of your screen by simply dragging & dropping, and resizing widgets. You can play with this in any of our templates, such as The Afterschool Program template. https://templates.getgrist.com/doc/afterschool-program

2. Linked widgets/related data also benefit from this flexibility. Our Lightweight CRM template has a good example. https://templates.getgrist.com/doc/lightweight-crm . In the `Contacts` page you may select a contact and see the contact information expressed as a card (same underlying table) and pull up a list of related interactions (separate underlying table), all on the same page.

3. Charts update dynamically as you slice and dice through data. You can see a great example of this in our investment research template. https://templates.getgrist.com/doc/investment-research . Compare static charts in the 'Overview' page to dynamic charts in the 'Breakdowns' page, which update as you select different years or categories.

Grist also has the following differentiators from Airtable which are worth a mention.

1. Formulas are more powerful, easier to use, and may be expressed as either Excel-like functions or Python formulas. There's a reference in our help center: https://support.getgrist.com/functions/

2. Only Grist has granular access controls that allow you to set up specific rules for how others may view your data. For example, maybe only you, the owner of a document, can see certain columns or tables, or maybe users can only see rows associated with their Grist login email. You can learn more about access rules here: https://support.getgrist.com/access-rules/

3. Similarly to Airtable blocks, Grist also allows custom widgets that present or work with data in very unique ways. Check out our Maps template ( https://templates.getgrist.com/pyMHqncEspfZ/Mapping-Locations ) and our Invoicing template ( https://templates.getgrist.com/9NH6D58FmxwP/Invoicing ) for just a couple examples of what custom widgets can do.

And finally, Grist row limits are much higher right out of the box, without having to pay for Airtables highest-level plan. As a rule of thumb, Grist works best for documents up to 100,000 rows. Attachments are counted separately. Attachments plus data in a single document are limited to 1GB.