Airtable just changed hands.
On August 4, 2026, Bending Spoons, the Italian holding company behind Evernote, WeTransfer, Vimeo, Eventbrite, and AOL, announced a deal to acquire Airtable for $1.285 billion in an all-cash transaction, its first purchase since going public on the Nasdaq the month before.
For any business that runs its operations on Airtable, that's the kind of news worth pausing on. It's also a good excuse to take a real look at what an Airtable alternative could look like in 2026.
Luckily, migration doesn’t have to be a lot of work. GlideOS can port your Airtable projects in just one prompt.
Glide uses AI to understand, rebuild, and normalize your database, but it doesn’t stop there. It builds a functional app interface on top of it, so you get real software for your operations. From there, you can control and interact with your data, set up automated workflows, add AI features, and integrate with all the other software your company uses. With Glide, you can create apps from your data and run your operations from a centralized dashboard.
If you want an Airtable alternative that is both more future-proof and more functional, Glide can make that happen in a single prompt.
What the Bending Spoons acquisition could mean for Airtable users
Bending Spoons has a well-known playbook. Its public strategy, by its own account, is to acquire software companies at a discount, cut costs, and "streamline" products to make them profitable more quickly. That approach has meant real, visible changes at the brands it's bought: fewer resources devoted to free tiers, leaner support teams, and product roadmaps that shift toward monetization over new capability.
Airtable fits that description: it was valued at over $11 billion in 2021, and its shares had reportedly been trading on secondary markets at around $4 billion earlier this year, well above the roughly $2.25 billion equity value implied by this deal.
Nothing has been announced about specific product or pricing changes at Airtable, and the deal isn't expected to close until later in 2026, pending regulatory approval. But it's worth noting that Bending Spoons frames its own approach around acquiring companies and then focusing on operational efficiency, and its co-founder described the Airtable deal around "doubling down" on the product's "core strength", language that, at other acquisitions, has often preceded a narrower, more consolidated roadmap rather than an expanding one.
But it's reasonable for any business that depends on Airtable for its databases, apps, and automations to start asking a practical question: what happens if support quality drops, prices rise, or product investment slows, as it has at other Bending Spoons companies?
For a business that has built operations, client portals, or internal tools on top of Airtable, that uncertainty alone is reason enough to have a backup plan, or to start moving now, on your own timeline, rather than later under pressure. The good news is that migrating off Airtable doesn't have to be disruptive, and GlideOS makes it fast.
What is GlideOS?
GlideOS is an AI software development platform for building internal business apps from a spreadsheet, a prompt, or a file, giving teams the ability to collaborate on custom software faster than ever. You can instruct Glide’s agent to build your apps, query your data, or make adjustments to your systems as your needs change and grow.
GlideOS turns spreadsheets and databases into fully custom, production-ready apps, with automation, AI, and security safeguards built in from the ground up. Your data lives in a secure database in Glide, and you’re able to interact with it both manually and via your AI agent.
Once your database lives in Glide, you can create multiple interconnected apps that share data. This means every stakeholder who needs to interact with your data gets their own tailored view. For example, if you’re storing Inventory data in a database, you could use Glide to build:
- a mobile app for delivery check-ins for the warehouse team
- an approval and reordering tool for management in the office
- and a dashboard for executives to get an overview of all operations.
For full details, check out the GlideOS docs.
What makes GlideOS a faster, more effective Airtable alternative
Here's why teams evaluating an Airtable alternative keep landing on GlideOS:
1. Your database easily comes with you
Glide’s AI ingests your data and builds you a database in moments. Switching data platforms is usually the most challenging part of any migration. GlideOS is built to make that step painless. You can import your existing Airtable bases, tables, records, relationships, and all, without needing to manually rebuild your schema from scratch. Rather than spending weeks re-entering data or writing migration scripts, most teams can bring over their core databases in a single sitting and be working in GlideOS the same day.
Once your data is in Glide, you can build interconnected apps that share that data in real-time or use your agent to ask questions about your business data.
2. Transform your data into custom applications
Glide uses AI to transform your spreadsheet or database into a beautiful, user-friendly custom application in minutes. Anyone on your team can build real software without needing to be a developer or know any code.
If you want to start from a prompt instead of data, describe the app you want, for example, "a client intake tracker with status stages and an approval step", and it generates a functioning first draft immediately, which you then adjust in plain language rather than through nested configuration menus. To add workflows or integrations.
Airtable's Interfaces feature was a helpful add-on to a spreadsheet-first product, but it is limited, and Airtable's own AI builder, Omni, still starts from the assumption that you're working inside tables, fields, and views.
3. Mobile-ready by default
Apps built in GlideOS are responsive, mobile-friendly software from the start, making them useful for field teams, client-facing portals, or staff who spend more time on a phone than on a laptop. You’ll never have to pinch and squint to see cells on a tiny screen. Airtable's interface layer was designed primarily around desktop workflows, with mobile support layered on top; GlideOS treats a phone-sized screen as non-negotiable, not an adaptation.
4. Data governance and security come standard
Role-based access, per-user permissions, and row-level data visibility are part of the base product in Glide rather than requiring separate configuration steps or a higher-tier add-on. That is critical for any business handling client data, HR records, or financials, where "everyone with the link can see everything" doesn’t work as a default.
5. One less thing to worry about during Airtable's ownership transition
This is the benefit that's easy to overlook but matters most this year, specifically: moving your working data and apps off a platform that just changed hands means your business isn't exposed to whatever comes out of the integration, like pricing changes, support changes, feature deprecations, or a slower roadmap. You don't have to assume the worst to see the value in not being dependent on the outcome.
Why Switching Now Makes Sense
Whatever Bending Spoons ultimately decides to do with Airtable, uncertainty is expensive when your business depends on a platform. Migrating early, while your team has time, rather than during a scramble later, is the lower-risk move. And because GlideOS is built to import Airtable bases directly and translate them into working apps almost immediately, "switching costs" are far lower than most teams expect.
And GlideOS doesn’t just offer an alternative database as a safe bet, it can give teams real, tangible improvements over Airtable. You can create real, working software that works on any device and has a robust database behind it, all in Glide.
Ready to see it for yourself? Bring in an Airtable base and see how quickly it becomes a working app in GlideOS. Most teams are up and running the same day.
