Spreadsheet familiarity, database power
Take a quick tour of the Grist interface, customizable widgets, and relational capabilities.
Lightweight CRM Example
Spreadsheet comparison for modern data management
Grist vs Notion
Workflow fragmentation or data management crisis? Notion and Grist address completely different business problems. Find your fit.
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Choose Grist when: You’re in spreadsheet chaos with unstructured data and need true database power without the complexity, especially when you need Python formulas, granular access controls, or self-hosting.
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Choose Notion when: Your team is managing multiple tools and needs to consolidate workflows into a unified workspace for docs, notes, and project coordination.
| Notion | Grist | |
|---|---|---|
| Core architecture | All-in-one workspace for notes, docs, and projects, with databases as a feature. | Relational spreadsheet-database; combines the familiarity of a spreadsheet with the robustness of a database. |
| Primary use case | Knowledge management, document collaboration, lightweight project tracking. | Building flexible, database-driven applications and managing structured data. |
| Relational data capabilities | ✔ | ✔ |
| Integrations | ✔ | ✔ |
| API extensibility | ✔ | ✔ |
| Real-time collaboration | ✔ | ✔ |
| Public sharing | ✔ | ✔ |
| AI assistant | ✔ | ✔ |
| Integrated document & note-taking | ✔ | X |
| Python support | X | ✔ |
| Interactive API console | X | Developers can explore, test, and experiment with the Grist API. |
| Granular access controls | Permissions for workspaces, pages, and databases, with advanced controls on Enterprise plans. | Row, column, and cell-level permissions available on all plans. |
| Scalability | Database performance can slow when exceeding 1,000 rows. | Optimized for small-to-medium datasets, works best in the low hundreds of thousands of rows. |
| Self-hostable | X | Self-hostable and open-source. No data lock-in. SQLite format. |
Notion vs Grist
If you’re drowning in spreadsheet chaos, you’re facing a fundamentally different problem than someone who needs to consolidate team communication and project workflows.
Notion transforms team collaboration by unifying docs, notes, and projects into a single workspace. It’s built for teams managing siloed tooling and who need better organization.
Grist transforms data management for teams outgrowing spreadsheets. When you’re experiencing the limitations of spreadsheets, Grist provides true database power without losing the flexibility of a spreadsheet, plus Python formulas, granular access controls, and complete data autonomy through self-hosting.
How Notion compares to Grist
Notion solves workflow fragmentation by consolidating tools into one customizable workspace. It’s ideal when your pain point is coordinating across multiple platforms and keeping everyone aligned.
Grist addresses spreadsheet limitations by eliminating wasted time reconciling distributed data across multiple files thanks to granular user permissions. It also unlocks Python formulas and custom data views that standard spreadsheets often lack.
Why businesses choose Notion
All-in-one workspace
- A single source of truth for notes, documents, tasks, projects, and wikis.
- Reduces tool sprawl and context switching between applications.
Customization and flexibility
- Extremely customizable design allows businesses to build and tailor workflows, pages, and databases to fit their specific needs.
- Users can drag-and-drop “blocks” to create unique layouts.
AI Assistant
- The Notion AI Assistant enhances productivity by helping generate content, summarize information, autofill databases, and retrieve answers across connected apps (see Grist AI Assistant).
Template library
- Teams can get started quickly using its vast library of free templates for a wide range of use cases, including project management, budgeting, etc. (see Grist templates).
Knowledge management
- Companies use Notion for building, centralizing, and organizing internal wikis and knowledge bases, making important information easily accessible for team members.
Enterprise-ready features
- Specific tools purpose-built for large organizations include workspace analytics for employee engagement, user-level analytics, and domain management to control workspace creation.
What are the disadvantages of Notion?
Database performance issues: users report the application becomes sluggish when databases exceed 1,000 rows.
Self-hosting options: businesses with vendor lock-in or data privacy concerns cannot self-host.
Data autonomy: Notion does not store data in a portable format like SQLite.
Limited formula power: lacks native support for advanced data manipulation languages like Python.
Total cost of ownership: key features like Notion AI are paid add-ons per user, per month, which can significantly increase the total subscription cost.
Why businesses choose Grist
Evolved data management
Businesses outgrowing basic spreadsheets choose Grist to handle more data without performance degradation, within a familiar spreadsheet interface, and includes the power of a relational database.
Technical power & flexibility
Full Python support enables sophisticated calculations and data transformations directly within the tool. Excel-like functions. Built-in drag-and-drop dashboards and support for custom-coded views. Trigger formulas for automation and data integrity.
Data portability & ownership
Businesses with data privacy concerns, vendor lock-in, or who would prefer not to host their data on US servers can fully self-manage Grist.
Secure & granular collaboration
True cross-functional collaboration is enabled by granular access rules that control permissions down to the individual cell level. This is in contrast to Notion’s broader page-level permissions.
“I love Grist. It’s crazy powerful. I still can’t believe what we’ve been able to achieve in it. It’s the dream that low-code was sold as for years – we can do incredible things in each column with Python and we can build our own widgets to run on those! Wild!”
Elliot Lee
User Researcher
“The more I use Grist, the more I LOVE it. I have been surveying self-hosted database GUI tools, and I was consistently disappointed with their shortcomings or bugginess. Grist is the first to have tilted the balance the other way.”
Stephen S.
Publications, Personal City Guides
“Grist has given us incredible flexibility to solve data problems and find solutions, whether it is for a small team at the district, or at scale with the entire district staff. We’re really excited about the different ways we can use it going forward.”
Director of Product
EdTech Company
“What I like about Grist the most is its focus. It appears simple, but it’s very powerful in a focused way. Grist has really improved our workflow and communication.”
Chris Scott
Co-founder in Digital Marketing
“If people spend some time learning a new tool they’ll have more power to do their work and research. I said to one of my students, ‘You will be very very happy using Grist because you are miserable using Excel!'”
Eduardo Dalcin, Ph.D.
Biodiversity Informatics Expert
“Most CRMs don’t work the way Grist works. Grist’s layouts are simple and do exactly what we need.”
Jennifer Bledsoe
IT Tech at Law Firm
“I recently discovered Grist after becoming frustrated with the limitations of traditional spreadsheets like Excel and Google Sheets. Grist has been a breath of fresh air, especially with its ability to handle structured data in a way that feels familiar to anyone with experience in relational databases, but with the added flexibility of Python.”
Will Bailey
Small Business Manager
How businesses can get started with Grist
Easily import existing XLSX and CSV files to start using Grist right away.
Grist’s incremental imports feature allows users to import new activity to existing data and Grist intelligently combines it without creating duplicates or needing manual cleanup.
Pre-built templates
Jump right into Grist’s spreadsheet-like interface with these pre-built templates:
The evolution of spreadsheets
When teams are outgrowing spreadsheets, they need database structure and extensibility, not workflow consolidation.
Notion excels at unifying team workspaces. Grist tackles data complexity head-on.
For businesses hitting spreadsheet limitations but needing familiar interfaces, Grist delivers relational database power without the complexity.
