Head to head
Stop guessing which one. Put them side by side.
Up to 4 tools, same rows for each: what it is, what it really costs, the trap, and how to wire it up. The URL carries your picks — send it to anyone.
Airtable as a CMSKeystaticMDX
Quick read
- Free with no card: Keystatic, MDX.
| Field | Airtable as a CMSairtable.com | Keystatickeystatic.com | MDXmdxjs.com |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Airtable is a relational spreadsheet with a REST API, often used as a lightweight CMS for structured collections such as staff directories, event listings or product roundups. The free plan gives 5 editors and 1,000 records per base; read-only viewers are free and unlimited on every plan. | Keystatic from Thinkmill is an MIT-licensed CMS that makes Markdown, MDX, JSON and YAML in your repository editable through a React admin UI. There is no database. It runs against the local filesystem in development and against GitHub in production. | MDX is a format that lets you write JSX inside Markdown, so an article can embed live React components — charts, interactive figures, embeds — between paragraphs of prose. It compiles to a React component and is supported by Vite, Next.js and Astro. |
| Category | CMS & content infrastructure | CMS & content infrastructure | CMS & content infrastructure |
| Cost tier | mixed | free | free |
| Pricing | Free: 5 editors, 1,000 records/base, 1GB attachments, 1,000 API calls/mo. Team $20/user/mo annual (50k records). Business $45/user/mo (125k records). | Free and MIT-licensed with no seat limits. Keystatic Cloud is an optional free add-on for GitHub auth and image handling. | Free, MIT-licensed open format. |
| Why builders pick it | Unbeatable for structured, tabular content a non-developer maintains daily. Views, filters and forms come free, and the grid is far faster to bulk-edit than any real CMS here. | Zero cost and zero vendor lock-in — the schema is a TypeScript file and content stays as plain files you can grep and diff. Ships integrations for Next.js, Astro and Remix. | The reason a technical publication can ship an interactive explainer inside an ordinary article. Every file-based tool here — Tina, Keystatic, Outstatic, Velite — speaks it natively. |
| Watch out for | The free tier's 1,000 API calls per month makes it viable only for build-time fetching. Long-form prose in a cell is miserable — rich text support is thin. Per-editor pricing scales badly for a large newsroom. | Smaller community and slower release cadence than Tina or Payload. No official MCP server, no built-in scheduling, and no multi-stage editorial workflow or approval chain. | MDX is a compiler, not a CMS: no editor, no media library, no workflow, no roles. Non-technical writers will not author raw MDX, so pair it with an editing layer. |
| How to wire it up | npm i airtable | npm create @keystatic@latest | npm i @mdx-js/rollup |
| Editor's pick | No | No | No |
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# Tool comparison — Airtable as a CMS vs Keystatic vs MDX Source: Kbaise, a directory of tools that work with Lovable projects. Pick one and tell me why before writing any integration code. ## Airtable as a CMS (airtable-as-a-cms) - URL: https://airtable.com - Category: CMS & content infrastructure - Cost: mixed — Free: 5 editors, 1,000 records/base, 1GB attachments, 1,000 API calls/mo. Team $20/user/mo annual (50k records). Business $45/user/mo (125k records). - What it is: Airtable is a relational spreadsheet with a REST API, often used as a lightweight CMS for structured collections such as staff directories, event listings or product roundups. The free plan gives 5 editors and 1,000 records per base; read-only viewers are free and unlimited on every plan. - Why builders pick it: Unbeatable for structured, tabular content a non-developer maintains daily. Views, filters and forms come free, and the grid is far faster to bulk-edit than any real CMS here. - Trap: The free tier's 1,000 API calls per month makes it viable only for build-time fetching. Long-form prose in a cell is miserable — rich text support is thin. Per-editor pricing scales badly for a large newsroom. - Wiring: npm i airtable - Full dossier: /api/public/tools/airtable-as-a-cms ## Keystatic (keystatic) - URL: https://keystatic.com - Category: CMS & content infrastructure - Cost: free — Free and MIT-licensed with no seat limits. Keystatic Cloud is an optional free add-on for GitHub auth and image handling. - What it is: Keystatic from Thinkmill is an MIT-licensed CMS that makes Markdown, MDX, JSON and YAML in your repository editable through a React admin UI. There is no database. It runs against the local filesystem in development and against GitHub in production. - Why builders pick it: Zero cost and zero vendor lock-in — the schema is a TypeScript file and content stays as plain files you can grep and diff. Ships integrations for Next.js, Astro and Remix. - Trap: Smaller community and slower release cadence than Tina or Payload. No official MCP server, no built-in scheduling, and no multi-stage editorial workflow or approval chain. - Wiring: npm create @keystatic@latest - Full dossier: /api/public/tools/keystatic ## MDX (mdx) - URL: https://mdxjs.com - Category: CMS & content infrastructure - Cost: free — Free, MIT-licensed open format. - What it is: MDX is a format that lets you write JSX inside Markdown, so an article can embed live React components — charts, interactive figures, embeds — between paragraphs of prose. It compiles to a React component and is supported by Vite, Next.js and Astro. - Why builders pick it: The reason a technical publication can ship an interactive explainer inside an ordinary article. Every file-based tool here — Tina, Keystatic, Outstatic, Velite — speaks it natively. - Trap: MDX is a compiler, not a CMS: no editor, no media library, no workflow, no roles. Non-technical writers will not author raw MDX, so pair it with an editing layer. - Wiring: npm i @mdx-js/rollup - Full dossier: /api/public/tools/mdx ## Quick read - Free with no card: Keystatic, MDX. ## Rules 1. Prefer the free tier when no budget was stated, and say what the ceiling is. 2. Read the full dossier before integrating. 3. Fetch /api/public/models before writing any AI model ID.
Agents can fetch the same thing: GET /api/public/compare?slugs=airtable-as-a-cms,keystatic,mdx