Airtable is now owned by Bending Spoons. What should Airtable customers do?

Bending Spoons agreed to buy Airtable on 4 August 2026 and completed the purchase on 4 September 2026. As of 2 October 2026, no change to Airtable's plans, prices or staffing has been announced, and nobody outside the two companies knows what will change. The useful response is the same whatever happens: export each base, write down what lives only inside Airtable, check what you pay, then decide calmly whether to stay, hedge or move.

What is confirmed about the Airtable acquisition?

At closing, Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari said the focus would be on "investing heavily in Airtable's product, customer support, and go-to-market capabilities." Neither the announcement nor the completion release says anything about pricing or headcount. As of 2 October 2026, Airtable's pricing page still lists Team at $20 and Business at $45 per user per month billed annually, with a Free plan and custom Enterprise Scale pricing.

What has Bending Spoons done after earlier acquisitions?

Bending Spoons buys established software products and keeps them. In its September 2026 release about buying Miro it wrote: "We acquire businesses with the intention of owning and operating them for the long term," and it says it has never sold a material business. So the realistic question is how Airtable will be run. The public record from earlier purchases:

• Evernote (deal announced November 2022): 129 people were laid off on 17 February 2023. In July 2023 most operations moved to Europe, with Ferrari citing a "significant boost in operational efficiency." From 4 December 2023, Free users were limited to fifty notes and one notebook.
• WeTransfer (bought July 2024): in September 2024 TechCrunch reported that Bending Spoons planned to lay off 75% of staff, out of more than 350.
• Vimeo (bought for $1.38 billion in cash, completed 24 November 2025): layoffs began in January 2026 and, per TechCrunch, affected a large portion of the workforce.

What might change for Airtable customers, and what nobody knows

History points at three areas worth watching: staffing (and with it support response times and the pace of the roadmap), the free tier and entry plans, and packaging or price at renewal. None of these has been announced for Airtable.

There are also reasons Airtable may play out differently. It was growing over 20% a year when it was bought, and the stated plan is to invest in product and support. Both readings can be true at once, and you do not need to bet on either. What you need is a position that holds up in both cases.

How do I export an Airtable base?

Airtable does not export a whole base as one file; its help center says each table has to be downloaded as its own CSV. The CSV holds the field values visible in the view you export from, so the view matters.

1. For each table, create a grid view with every field shown and no filters, so the export holds every record and every column.
2. Open the view menu and choose Download CSV. It works in the web and desktop apps, not on mobile.
3. Download attachments straight away. Attachment fields arrive in the CSV as a filename and a URL, and since 8 November 2022 those URLs expire after a few hours (Airtable guarantees at least two). Leave it a week and the CSV holds links that no longer work.
4. Save the schema. The Web API's base schema endpoint returns every table with its fields (types and options) and views. Keep the JSON next to the CSVs.
5. Note what the CSV leaves out: record comments, field descriptions, base guide content and data stored only in extensions.

curl "https://api.airtable.com/v0/meta/bases/appXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/tables" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" > base-schema.json

What should I document besides the data?

The parts of a base that do the work are the ones a CSV cannot carry. Airtable's own documentation says an automation lives inside a single base, and that interfaces cannot be duplicated into another base because they depend on the base's structure. Write them down while everything still runs.

If interfaces are what your staff and clients actually use, the guide to moving off Airtable Interfaces maps each page type to a replacement.

How do I audit what Airtable costs us?

1. List every collaborator per workspace and tag them: builds the base, edits daily, edits occasionally, only views.
2. Compare paid seats with the people who actually edit.
3. Write down your plan, billing cycle and renewal date. Renewal is when a plan change would reach your bill.
4. Note which plan features you rely on, so you know whether a repackaged plan would still cover you.

A worked example at list price: a 15-person operations team on Business pays 15 × $45 × 12 = $8,100 a year. If only six of them edit and the rest look things up, that split is worth knowing before any renewal conversation.

Should we stay on Airtable, hedge, or move?

For a team with staff or clients on Interfaces, the hedge is the calmest first step: nobody's day changes, and leaving stops being urgent. If you lean toward moving, the Airtable alternatives page compares the options, and the patterns behind past platform exits are in no-code tools that shut down. If you would rather talk the decision through, there is an Airtable migration help page.

How the hedge works in Emberblocks

Emberblocks connects to an Airtable base as a data source. The base is mirrored into Postgres: the app reads and writes the mirror at database speed, edits push back to Airtable within seconds, and changes made in Airtable arrive through Airtable's own webhooks. Details are in the data sources guide.

• Schema stays in Airtable. Add fields there, then run Refresh schema. Fields removed in Airtable are kept locally, never silently dropped.
• Recovery tools. Pull now applies pending changes; Full re-sync re-reads the whole base if the mirror drifts.
• Attachments are re-hosted, so images keep working in the app instead of expiring like exported attachment links.
• Roles for the people using the app: per-table create, read, update and delete, row filters such as [Owner] = USEREMAIL() for "my records only", and fields you can hide or make read-only. App users can be loaded from a table you already keep.
• Exports on your terms. Table blocks export CSV for the roles you allow, so people using the app can take data out without access to the base itself.
• Builders never pay. Paid plans are priced by the people who use your published apps; see pricing.

Where the hedge falls short, plainly:

• Linked-record, attachment, multi-select and lookup fields come through read-only in the app. Edit those in Airtable.
• There is no one-click switch that detaches an app from Airtable. Leaving Airtable completely means exporting the rows, importing them into built-in tables (column types are detected on import) and pointing the app's blocks at the new tables. The hedge buys a working front-end and a calmer timeline, not a free exit.
• If your team is happy in Airtable's grid and no one outside needs access, a second tool adds little. Stay, and keep the exports current.
• Single sign-on and custom domains are not available yet, which rules it out for some client portals.