Airtable Client Portal: Portals Add-On, Softr or Glide?

On list prices, Softr's Pro plan is the cheapest sensible portal once clients edit: $99 a month billed yearly for up to 50 client logins. Airtable's Portals add-on, from $120 a month for 15 editing guests on Team, wins when clients mostly view, because read-only guests are not billed. Glide Classic's Business plan starts at $199.

Headline prices settle only part of it. Portals keeps everything inside Airtable, so a client who only views a project status page costs nothing extra, while a client who updates records takes a paid portal seat. Softr and Glide count every client login and add a second account, a second set of permissions and a sync to look after. The sections below work the sums for 12, 40 and 120 clients and show what each tool lets a client change.

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What each option is, in one paragraph apiece

Portals add-on. A paid extra for Airtable's Team, Business and Enterprise Scale plans that lets outside people log in to Airtable interfaces (the custom screens you design on top of your tables) and see a slice of your data. It uses Airtable's own sign-in, so there is no second tool to connect, and everything stays in one account.

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Softr. A separate no-code app builder that connects to Airtable as one of its data sources. You design pages and permissions in Softr, clients sign in there, and Softr reads and writes your Airtable records. Softr's own client-portal page says logins, user management and hosting are built in and that each client can see a personalised view with role-based permissions.

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Glide. Another no-code builder, aimed at app-like screens. Glide now sells two separate products: GlideOS, its newer AI app builder, and Glide Classic, the original platform. Classic is the one that lists Airtable sync as a data source and prices by users and updates, so it is the version to price for an Airtable portal.

The Portals add-on: price, limits and what clients get

These figures come from Airtable's pricing page and its support article on Portals.

Airtable says larger packs carry volume discounts, but the amounts for packs above 15 sit in the pricing page's selector rather than in text I could read, so do not extrapolate from the $8 figure: choose the pack on Airtable's page and read the price it shows.

The rules that shape the real cost:

• Read-only guests are free. Airtable says read-only portal users are not billable. With 15 paid portal seats you could give 15 guests editor or commenter access and still add 5 more read-only guests.
• Editors on more than one base are billed as internal editors. A guest who edits through portals on several bases within the same workspace or organisation is billed as an internal editor, which is a $20 or $45 seat, not an $8 portal seat. Keep each client's access to one base.
• One portal per base. Enabling guest access creates the single portal for that base, and you can share any number of its interfaces with guests.
• Guests must be external. On Business, guest email domains must differ from the domains in your admin panel. On Team, the organisation owner must sign in with a work email address, not a personal provider such as Gmail, to use Portals.
• Guests cannot see each other. External users are hidden from one another by default on all plans, and guests cannot share an interface onward or reach your Airtable home.

What a client gets is an Interface Designer screen: lists, record detail pages, dashboards, forms and buttons arranged by you, using only the fields you place on them. Their power is the same as an interface-only collaborator's: viewer, commenter or editor.

What a client can edit, level by level

Airtable's Interface Designer permissions article sets out three interface-only levels, which portal guests follow.

The billing row follows from Airtable's statement that only read-only access is non-billable, so a commenter, who is not read-only, takes a seat. Check that against your own invoice in the first month.

The design choice is how to give clients a voice without making them editors. A common compromise is to let clients comment on a deliverable (commenter) and to give them a separate form-style interface for the few fields they must change, such as approving a proof. Decide which clients need that second power, because it moves them from free to paid.

Making each client see only their own records

Portals do not isolate clients by themselves. The isolation comes from the filters you place on each interface element. Airtable's own tip is to use filters that identify records associated with the current user, so external users see only what is relevant to them.

Take a small translation agency with a Projects table. Add a Clients table with one row per client contact and an Email field, and link each project to its client. Then add a lookup field on Projects that pulls the client's email through that link, and on each interface page set "Filter by" so the lookup is "Current user's email". Airtable says current-user filtering restricts what each signed-in viewer sees, matches against the email on their verified Airtable account, and has to be set on every page separately. It is equally clear that ordinary filters are not access control: anyone who can open a page can reach it, so never share an internal page with guests and rely on a filter to hide it. Test the set-up before launch:

1. Create a dummy guest with a second email address you control, on a different domain from your own.
2. Link two projects to the dummy client and two to a real one.
3. Sign in as the dummy and confirm you see exactly two projects, with none of the other client's names, quotes or notes in any field, detail page or search.
4. Open a record's detail view and check linked records. A link field on a detail page can reveal the other side of a relationship, such as the staff member's internal notes, if you place it on the page.
5. Remove the dummy afterwards.

The failure to dread is a field you forgot was on the page. Build the client interface from a blank page and add each field on purpose, rather than duplicating your internal interface and removing fields.

Softr: plans, client-user caps and permissions

Softr's client-portal page says logins, user management and hosting are built in, that each client gets a personalised view with role-based permissions, and that clients and partners can be invited straight away. Airtable is one of the data sources it connects to.

Its pricing page shows yearly billing by default, and the plans that matter for a portal are these:

Pro is the first plan that lists granular permissions and visibility, comments and the option to remove Softr branding, so it is the realistic floor for a client portal. The user rules matter more than the price. App users who share a business email domain with one of your builders count as team users; everyone else, including anyone signing in with a free address such as Gmail, counts as a client user. The same email across several Softr apps is counted once, and deactivated users are not counted. On Pro and above you can add app users beyond the allowance, billed separately each month, but the page text does not state the per-user rate, so ask for it before you plan past the cap.

The sum is short. For N clients on Pro, the cost is $99 a month billed yearly while N is 50 or fewer, and $99 plus Softr's extra-user charge for each client above 50. Add your Airtable seats separately, since Softr reads from your Airtable base and your staff still edit there.

What Softr adds that Portals does not: pages designed like a website, your own domain, richer layouts, and the ability to serve many more clients under one plan. What it takes away: simplicity. You now manage two accounts, two sets of permissions and a sync between them, and a field you rename in Airtable can break a Softr block. For a deeper comparison of Softr and Glide on cost and fit, see Glide vs Softr for a Client Portal: Cost and Fit for a Small Business.

Glide: where it fits and what to check

Glide's main pricing page now covers GlideOS: Free at $0, Basic at $25 a month, Plus at $50 and Pro at $125, billed monthly with annual plans described as coming soon. Basic includes 2 published apps and Plus 5, Plus adds public apps and a customisable login screen, and Pro starts at 5 team members with unlimited published apps and org-level roles and permissions. That page lists no external-user pricing and no Airtable connector, and Glide says GlideOS apps live in a separate account that cannot share data with Glide Classic.

Glide Classic, which still takes sign-ups, is the version that lists Airtable sync. Its Business plan starts at $199 a month billed yearly and includes 30 users, then $5 per additional user a month on yearly billing ($6 monthly), with 5,000 updates included and 2 cents for each update after that. Users with business email addresses are listed as a Business-plan feature, which matters because most trade clients sign in with work addresses. Before choosing Glide for a client portal, confirm three things in writing: that each client is limited to the rows that belong to them, how changes synced from Airtable count towards updates, and how long Glide expects to keep Classic running alongside GlideOS.

Glide is a natural choice when the portal is really a small app, for example a delivery checker used on phones, and when the data can live in Glide. It is a weaker choice when your Airtable base is already the source of truth and you only need clients to see slices of it, because you would copy or sync the data. Softr vs Lovable: A Portal From Your Data or From a Prompt? covers a third way to build the front end.

The cost at 12, 40 and 120 clients

Take the translation agency with four staff editors on Team, which is 4 x $20 = $80 a month on annual billing. The three client volumes below use each vendor's list prices on yearly billing where it is offered. Airtable shows pack prices above 15 guests only in its selector, so those cells name the pack for you to price.

Glide figures exclude any updates beyond the 5,000 included, at 2 cents each, and both Softr and Glide figures assume staff keep working in Airtable rather than logging in to the portal themselves.

The first row shows an Airtable quirk: the Portals support article says read-only guests are non-billable inside a portal you have bought, but the pricing text does not say whether you can switch Portals on without buying a pack. Confirm that with Airtable before assuming a free read-only route.

The per-guest view is clearer. At the smallest Team pack, 12 guests in a 15-seat pack cost $120 / 12 = $10 each, and a full 15 cost $8 each. Softr Pro works out at about $2 a client once all 50 client places are used ($99 / 50), and Glide Classic Business at about $6.63 a user across its 30 ($199 / 30). Read-only guests do not reduce the add-on price, but they let you invite more people at no extra charge. If you will never fill 15 seats, a form and a share link is probably cheaper, as the next section shows.

When you do not need a portal at all

A login is a heavy tool for a light need. Airtable does not charge for form submissions, share links or read-only collaborators, so three cheaper patterns are worth ruling out first:

• A form for intake. Clients send a request or upload details through a form linked from your site. Nothing for them to log in to.
• A share link for status. A read-only view of a single project that you send each client. The weakness is that anyone with the link can open it, so it suits low-sensitivity data such as a delivery date, never prices or personal details.
• An automated email. An Airtable automation can email the client when a stage changes. For a courier firm, "your consignment is out for delivery" by email replaces a tracking login altogether.

Use a portal when clients must see private, changing data that is specific to them, and when "ring us for an update" is costing you real time. A useful test: count how many status calls and emails a week come from clients. If it is under ten, a form and an automated email will do.

Which to choose, by situation

• Fewer than 15 clients, simple status and a few approvals: Portals on Team. Softr Pro is $21 a month cheaper on yearly billing, but Portals spares you a second account and a sync, and the $120 add-on is a known cost.
• Clients mostly view, rarely edit: Portals, because read-only guests are not billed as seats.
• Between 15 and 50 clients who edit, or a designed site feel: Softr Pro, which covers 50 client logins for $99 a month billed yearly; above 100, price Softr Business plus extra users against an Airtable pack.
• The portal is really a mobile app for staff and a few clients, and the data can live in Glide: Glide Classic, after the three questions above are answered.
• You want a branded sign-in page: Portals on Business, since only Business and Enterprise Scale can customise it, which costs $45 a seat instead of $20.

A mistake that exposed another client's quote

Picture a small manufacturer that built a portal so wholesale customers could see their orders. The interface list filtered by customer correctly, but the order detail page included a linked "Related quotes" field that showed every quote linked to the product, not the customer. A customer opened an order and saw another trade customer's discounted price. The fix took five minutes (remove the field), but the discovery took a phone call from an unhappy customer.

The lesson applies to all three tools. Test as a guest, open every detail page and linked field, and treat any field that links to a table you have not filtered as exposed until proven otherwise. In Airtable, put the guest-facing fields on the page one at a time.

A checklist before you invite the first client

1. Write down what a client should see, in one sentence per screen, and what they may change.
2. Build a separate client interface from a blank page rather than copying your internal one.
3. Filter each list to the signed-in client's records.
4. Remove or avoid linked fields that reach into other clients' data.
5. Test with a dummy guest on another email domain, on a phone and a computer.
6. Decide whether each client is viewer, commenter or editor, and count the editors and commenters against your portal seats.
7. Tell clients what to expect: an email invitation, a one-time account creation, and the address to use.
8. Review who has access every quarter and remove guests whose project has ended.

If you also use Airtable as your CRM, the base design in Airtable CRM Setup for a Service Business: Tables, Views and Alerts is the natural data source for a client portal, and Airtable Team vs Business Plan: Records, AI Credits and Admin Controls explains what you get for the extra $25 a seat if you want the branded sign-in and admin controls.

Practical questions about letting clients log in

Do clients need an Airtable account for the Portals add-on?

Yes. Airtable's support article says interfaces can only be shared with users who have a verified Airtable account, and portal guests sign in through a sign-in screen for the portal. Business and Enterprise Scale can brand that screen with a logo and background image. Expect to explain the sign-up step to clients.

Can one client see another client's records?

Not by default if you build it correctly. Portal guests are hidden from each other on every plan, but the records they see depend on your interface filters. Filter the interface to records linked to the signed-in person, then test with a dummy guest before inviting a real client.

Do read-only clients count towards the portal seat total?

Airtable says read-only portal users are not billable. If you buy 15 portal seats, you can give 15 guests editor or commenter access and still invite more read-only guests who do not count against that total. A portal where clients only look costs far less than one where they edit.

Is a share link or a form cheaper than a portal?

Often, yes. Airtable does not charge for form submissions or share links, so collecting information from clients costs nothing extra. A portal earns its price only when each client must log in and see their own private records, not a shared view anyone with the link can open.

Can I move from Portals to Softr later?

Yes, because your data stays in Airtable either way. Softr connects to Airtable as a data source. What you lose is the interface work you built, which has to be rebuilt in the new tool, so choose the front end with a two-year view and avoid building twice.

Further reads

• Airtable vs AppSheet for a Job Tracker: Cost, Offline Use and AI — Another route to a job tracker with outside users
• Airtable vs Notion as a Business Database: Which Handles AI Better? — Airtable's AI fields and credits against Notion's agents and Business plan, compared on price, structure and upkeep for a small team.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: Airtable pricing page and Airtable support articles on Portals and Interface Designer permissions; Softr's pricing and client-portal pages; Glide's GlideOS and Glide Classic pricing pages; all read in November 2026.