One of the most common things people want to surface in a Softr portal is a count showing how many records are in a list, table, or grid, how many requests came in this month, how many items are at a particular status. Airtable holds the data but does not allow for this without some manual setup and regular updating.
Softr is our frontend where the user sees it. The question is how to get the number from one to the other cleanly.
Three approaches work, and each comes with a different cost and complexity. The one you pick depends on what you are trying to show and what plan you are on.
Option 1: Softr Charts on the Professional plan
The Professional plan and above give you a Charts block, which is the simplest answer. You connect a chart block to your Airtable table, choose a field to group by or count, and Softr handles the aggregation and display. You can show bar charts, line charts, pie charts, and summary numbers, all taken from your Airtable data.
The chart block is particularly useful for showing counts by status, by date range, or by any single-select field you have in Airtable. To show “Active Projects by Department,” you link the chart to your Projects table, grouped by the Department field, and count records. No formulas are required in Airtable at all.
The limitation is the plan cost. Building a portal for a client or a small internal team where the Professional plan is not justified by other features means it is worth looking at the Airtable-side approaches below before upgrading purely for charts.
Option 2: A summary table in Airtable with a Rollup field
This is the most flexible approach and works on any Softr plan that can display records from an Airtable table. The idea is to build a dedicated Summary table in Airtable whose job is to hold calculated counts, then surface that table in Softr as a simple list or stat block.
Here is how to set it up
Create a Summary table in Airtable. Give it rows for each thing you want to count, one row per category, status, or team.
Add a linked record field that connects each Summary row to the table you want to count from. For example, link your “Active Projects” summary row to your Projects table, filtered to only include active projects.
Add a Rollup field to the Summary table. Point it at the linked Projects field. Choose COUNTA() as the aggregation function. This counts all non-empty text and numeric values in the linked records. The output is your count.
In Softr, connect a List or Grid block to your Summary table. Display the Name and Rollup count field. The number updates automatically as records change in your Projects table.
COUNTA() counts non-empty text and numeric items in linked records. Use COUNT() if your field contains numbers only, or COUNTALL() if you want to include empty values in the total.
The reason to use COUNTA() rather than COUNT() for most project or task counting use cases is that the field you are counting through is typically a text field, like a project name, a task title, or a record name. COUNT() only counts numeric values, so it will return zero on text. COUNTA() handles both.
This approach can use Rollup conditions to filter what gets counted. You do not have to count everything in the linked table. You can count only the records that meet specific criteria you set.
When configuring the Rollup field, toggle on “Only include linked records from the table that meet certain conditions” and add your filters. For example: count only projects where Status = Active, count only requests submitted in the last 30 days, count only tasks assigned to a specific team.
This means a single Summary table can hold multiple rows, each with a Rollup field counting a different part of the same data. Active projects. Completed projects. Projects in review. All from one Projects table, counted separately with conditions.
To keep everything clean on Softr, add a formula field to your Summary table and use the IF formula to compile the record count.
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Option 3: Use the Count field
This is simpler and useful when you do not need to aggregate from a linked table, you just want to count how many records are linked to a parent record. The Count field type in Airtable is simpler than a Rollup. The Count field automatically counts the number of linked records without needing a formula.
The difference from Rollup is that Count cannot apply conditions or aggregation functions. It counts everything linked, so you set whatever conditions you need at the linked field level. Counting all linked records regardless of status or type means Count is the cleaner setup. Counting only a subset means Rollup with a condition is the right choice.
The manual aspect of both options 2 and 3 involves adding the linked records yourself. You can add them all at once from the main table or one at a time, though the latter is not a great option for a large table. Another consideration is keeping counts updated as new records come in. You can always set a default option for when a new record is created.
Displaying counts in Softr
Once your Airtable Summary table has the counts you need, the Softr side is straightforward. Show multiple rows from the Summary table using a list or grid block, each with a label and a count. This is very useful for a breakdown by category or status.