Security and data sovereignty
Grist is fully self-hostable, meaning you can deploy it on-premise to meet specific security and regulatory requirements. Grist data is always portable, with no lock-in mechanisms.
Grist combines on-premise flexibility with industry-leading collaboration tools. Trust your infrastructure and your data – no more, no less.
Open-source core with full source availability
Granular role-based access rules
Government-audited and auditable
Powerful sandboxed Python formulas
Robust SSO options (OIDC, SAML, and more)
Advanced admin controls for workspace management
How does Grist handle my data?
Grist is built for sensitive data. Your data is deployable on-premise while remaining collaborative. Your data is portable but follows strict role-bases access rules when exporting to lower exfiltration risk.
This technical architecture flows directly from our long-standing software principles.
Why do organizations with strict data security requirements choose Grist?
Grist is 100% self-hostable for on-premises deployment, or available with managed hosting around the world.
Grist presents a lowered risk profile thanks to comprehensive and highly-customizable role-based access rules, letting you limit access and exporting down to the row. You can also test these roles interactively to make sure access is properly limited.
Grist is built around fully portable data with no lock-in mechanisms. A Grist file is an SQLite database, and always able to be exported elsewhere – subject to access rules, of course.
How can Grist be deployed?
Secure SaaS
Hosted on getgrist.com and ready to go. The easiest way to start using Grist or to test out features before deploying on-premise.
Managed server
Grist Labs deploys and manages Grist on a dedicated server in a region of your choice. Gives you the customization of self-hosting, but leaves the devops and maintenance to us.
Self-hosted
Serve containerized via Docker or compile directly from source. Configure everything to fit your requirements: SSO, storage, sandboxing, snapshots, styling, and much more.
Why should my organization self-host Grist?
You don’t have to self-host Grist, but here are some common benefits we see in larger deployments:
Address governance, compliance or data residency requirements.
Integrate into your organization’s SSO.
Run with extra CPU and memory for more power.
Create advanced customizations and integrations.
Grist for Enterprise
All Grist features
Priority support
Security alerts
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Grist being fully self-hostable means you can deploy it on servers you own and administer. Grist Labs can also deploy and manage a Grist server for you in the region of your choice.
Learn more about self-hosting Grist in our Help Center, and visit grist-core repo on GitHub to view the source.
Grist supports a variety of authentication options for self-hosters, including OIDC, SAML and forwarded headers. If you don’t have a system already in place, we also provide an authentication method that lets users sign in via getgrist.com, built on the industry-standard OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect (OIDC) protocols. Learn more about self-hosted authentication in our Help Center.
Self-hosted Grist also supports the System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) for managing large organizations with dynamic user bases. Learn more.
Grist data is always portable and exportable, subject to access rules that you define. You can export tables as CSV, TSV and XLSX files, as well an entire Grist documents with or without change history.
Grist documents can be downloaded in their entirety as an SQLite database file with a .grist extension. The downloaded file will contain all your tabular data, any attached files within those tables, metadata about your tables, pages, and widgets, and a history of recent modifications of the document.
The French government deploys Grist as part of its digital suite for thousands of public sector workers.
Grist is a general tool and is used in many different capacities. Aside from the French public service, some of the largest Grist deployments are in manufacturing (Maddox), aerospace (NP Aerospace) and utilities (AEP). All of these industries have strict security needs, including on-premises hosting as an absolute requirement.
“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
“Grist has become our go-to for more complex, structured data. It sits somewhere between Excel and Access—powerful, relational, and flexible enough for prototyping real data-driven applications.”
Olivier Lambert
CEO at Vates
“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 discovered Grist after becoming frustrated with the limitations of 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
“Sharing an Access database is near impossible, but Grist makes sharing a relational database simple.”
Walt Rice
IT Consultant
“I needed an open-source master database that could connect to n8n and AI tools. After trying Notion, Airtable, Siyuan, Baserow, and NocoDB, I chose Grist for its Python-native AI support, flexible integrations, and simple n8n connections.”
Robin A.
Project Manager
“I’ve worked extensively with NocoDB, Notion, SeaTable, and Baserow, and Grist really stands out. The balance between spreadsheet-style flexibility and structured, low-code database design is excellent.”
Andriy Kostyuk
Automation Engineer, Founder at Enceladus
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