| Progress | Coda | |
|---|---|---|
| Rich documents | Yes — rich editor, version history, PDF export | Yes — powerful doc editor |
| Docs as apps (formulas, buttons, automations) | No — docs stay simple on purpose | Yes — best in class, with 600+ Packs |
| Share docs with clients | Publish to a clean public page, no account needed | Yes — but free shared docs cap at 50 objects / 1,000 rows |
| Team chat, meetings, screen recordings | Built in, same workspace as the doc | No — external tools or Packs |
| E-signatures and booking pages | Built in | No |
| Kanban board and project calendar | Built in, linked to the project | Buildable from tables, but you assemble it yourself |
| Price | Free during open beta | $10–$30 per Doc Maker/month (annual) |
What Coda does brilliantly
Coda's core idea still holds up: a doc shouldn't just describe your work, it should run it. Tables in Coda are real databases with views, a genuine formula language, buttons that trigger actions, and automations that fire on their own. With 600+ Packs connecting to outside tools, a skilled builder can turn a single Coda doc into a tracker, a wiki, and a lightweight internal app all at once. Now part of the Superhuman suite alongside Grammarly, it's a mature, deeply capable platform. If your team wants to build custom tooling out of documents — and someone is willing to climb the formula learning curve — Coda is the best-in-class way to do it.
Where Progress comes at it differently
Progress isn't trying to out-build Coda at doc-as-app. Our documents are deliberately simpler: a fast rich-text editor with version history, PDF export, and one-click publish to a clean public page your client can read without an account. The difference is everything around the doc. In Progress, that doc lives inside the project workspace — next to the kanban board, team chat, files, a Google-synced calendar, video meetings with AI notes, screen recordings, e-signatures, and booking pages. No formula language to learn, and no pricing model that charges per person who can create. Coda's per-Doc-Maker seats ($10–$30/month each, billed annually) and free-plan limits that kick in exactly when you share a doc mean the cost shows up right when a client project gets real. Progress is completely free during open beta, for everyone in the project.
And it comes with the rest of the project
These are live — click around. Every Progress project ships with all of it.
Board
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Chat
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Looking for a Coda alternative?
The two things teams most often cite when leaving Coda are the per-Doc-Maker pricing and the formula learning curve. If you genuinely need docs that behave like custom software, stay — nothing matches Coda there. But if what you actually use Coda for is writing things down, sharing them with clients, and keeping a project moving, you're paying for power you don't touch. Progress gives you clean, versioned documents you can publish to the web in one click — plus the board, chat, meetings, e-signatures, and booking pages the project needs around them. No per-maker seats, no shared-doc limits that lock a doc read-only mid-project, and it's free during open beta. If you love the doc but need the rest of the project too, that's the trade Progress is built for.