Public Airtable Portals Anyone Can Browse Without Signing In

Some Airtable data is meant to be found. A job board, a property list, a directory of suppliers, animals ready for adoption. Asking people to sign in before they can see any of it loses most of them at the door.

A public portal opens the door. Anyone with the link browses the portal without an account, and the people who need more sign in for it.

What it does

Under Login in the portal's settings, switch on Make this portal public. From then on:

• Visitors see what your default role sees, read-only
• Tables your default role can open, and that show all records, become public; tables that show people only their own records stay private
• Your user table is never public
• If your portal has roles, a Sign in button gives a person their own role, with whatever it lets them see and edit
• If you allow self-registration, a Sign up button sits next to it, so a visitor can create an account on the spot

Before you save, the setting lists which tables will be public and which stay private, and names any field visitors will see that pulls data from a private table. You decide with the list in front of you, not after the fact.

Why it matters

A sign-in wall makes sense for a client's invoices. It makes no sense for a list of open roles you want people to apply for. Until now, the choice for public data was an Airtable shared view, which looks like a spreadsheet, or a separate website someone has to keep in step with the base.

A public portal is the same portal, on the same base, with your branding and your layouts. The kanban board, the gallery, the record pages, the filters: visitors get all of it. Change a record in Airtable and the public page follows within minutes.

It also means one portal can serve two audiences. The public browses the listings. Your members sign in and see the members-only tables alongside them.

Found by search engines

A public portal can be listed by Google, records included, with a sitemap ready to submit. That is on by default, because being found is usually the point. Switch it off if you only want to share the link yourself.

How it works

Your existing settings decide what is public. Table access, field permissions and record filters all apply to visitors exactly as they apply to your default role, so there is no second set of rules to keep in step. The public portals guide covers what visitors can and cannot reach, how signing in works on a public portal, and the search engine and refresh settings.

Who it is for

Anyone publishing records they want people to find: property listings, animals ready for adoption, open roles and applications, and product catalogs. It works best where browsing is open to all and doing something, applying, booking, updating, needs an account.