What it is

Rowy is an open-source low-code backend platform that runs in the browser. It provides a spreadsheet-like interface for managing data stored in Firestore, and it embeds a code editor for writing cloud functions in JavaScript or TypeScript. The project lives in the Firebase and Google Cloud Platform ecosystem, and it is written in TypeScript. It is commonly described as an Airtable-style front end for a Firestore database, with automation built in.

The concrete problem it solves is the gap between a raw database and a usable admin surface. Teams building on Firestore normally have to write custom CRUD screens, permission logic, and background jobs before anyone can edit data or trigger automation. Rowy supplies that layer out of the box: a spreadsheet grid for reading and writing records, field-level validation, and a place to attach functions that fire when data changes. It replaces the manual scaffolding work that would otherwise sit between a database and the people who need to operate it.

Key capabilities

• Spreadsheet interface for Firestore with full CRUD operations, plus bulk import and export in csv, json, and tsv formats.
• Column controls including lock, freeze, resize, hide, and rename, along with sorting and filtering by row values.
• Multiple views over the same collection, so different audiences can see different slices of the data.
• Cloud function workflows triggered on field-level data changes, with support for any NPM module or external API.
• Pre-built code blocks for connecting to tools such as SendGrid, Algolia, Twilio, and BigQuery, or custom blocks written by the user.
• More than thirty field types, covering short text, long text, email, phone, and URL, custom pickers for date, checkbox, single select, and multi select, image and file uploaders, and rich editors for JSON, code, rich text, and Markdown.
• Special field types including an action field that acts as a clickable trigger for a cloud function, an aggregate field that pulls a value from a row's sub-table, a connector field that joins data across collections, and a connect service field that reads from any HTTP endpoint.
• Role-based access control at both the table level and the field level, with built-in user management and customizable views per role.

Who uses it and how

• Teams building internal tools on Firebase who need an editable data surface without writing an admin panel from scratch.
• Developers using Rowy as a CMS backend for Firestore, managing content records through the grid rather than through the console.
• Operators who attach cloud functions to field changes to run automations such as sending email through SendGrid, indexing with Algolia, or loading data into BigQuery.
• Projects that need granular permissions, using table-level and field-level roles to expose only the columns each user group should see.
• Builders who want to prototype a backend quickly and then keep the same database, since the data stays in the team's own Firestore and GCP project.

Getting started

The recommended path is the quick guided install, which deploys Rowy into a Google Cloud Platform project through a deploy button at rowy.app. A manual install is documented for contributors who want to develop against the project itself, and a live demo playground is available at demo.rowy.io.

When to use it — and when not to

Rowy is positioned as an open-source alternative to Airtable, so it fits teams that want that style of interface while keeping data inside their own Google Cloud project; the README states that the cloud run instance operates exclusively on the user's GCP project and that Rowy does not access or store the data. A self-hoster therefore has to operate a Firestore database and a Google Cloud project, and the deployment runs as a cloud run instance rather than as a simple local service. The repository metadata shows no contributors recorded and no releases in the past year, so anyone adopting it should weigh the maintenance activity against their own tolerance for running and patching the stack themselves.