Maximum Number Of Automations

[Joseph_Wheeler]

Hey Everyone,

As someone who was previously using a lot of Airtable to Airtable automation through Zapier I jumped on the new built in Airtable Automation features. However I’m now having issues where I can’t create any new automations due to exceeding the maximum number of automations for the base. I can’t find any information on what the maximum amount actually is or if there is an option to increase this.

I love this feature but I’m now at a dead end where I can’t use it further, I can’t see how to increase my usage and I can’t see how much this has been exceeded by.

Any help from the community or from the Airtable team is greatly appreciated.

[Marko_Petrovic]

If i remember correctly, I think that limit is 25 automations per base. I don’t think there is a way to increase this (maybe on Enterprise plans) but i guess emailing Airtable support would be the way to go if you want 100% definitive answer :slightly_smiling_face:

[Bill_French]

Joseph_Wheeler:

but I’m now at a dead end where I can’t use it further

Surprise!

Airtable has created a harsh and silly brick wall to a deep customer dependency and reliable pathway to get work done. This constraint raises the total cost of ownership while forcing users to create complicated and often brittle solutions to get work done.

Bad Airtable, bad.

If you want to endear customers to your platform, find ways to eliminate surprises unless said surprise is a free fruit basket.

Commentary: Automation Optimization - It’s a Thing

No one ever discusses or ponders their data model, information architecture, or process automation in the context of optimizing such actions. I will bet, there are ways to build your actions in a way that could overcome this constraint. With power like Airtable event handlers and script automations also comes some responsibility to be prudent and smart.

@Marko.Petrovic mentioned the raw limit of 25 automations which I also don’t know off the top of my head, but I do know that automations can be “overloaded” much the way script functions can be designed to perform multiple computations.

Last week an Airtable client hit this exact brick wall; we took 11 separate automations and created a single agile automation that addressed all 11 actions.

Aggregating action processes is one dimension of automation optimization; there is also the number of times an automation fires and a variety of ways to streamline the pace.

[Marko_Petrovic]

Just to confirm number of automations per base, it is 25.

Current limits

If you’d like, you can add up to 25 automations to a base. Additionally, you can create up to 25 actions in one automation. Where applicable, an action can use outputs from previous actions in the same automation.

It can be found on this link:

Airtable - Support

Automations Overview

Join a live training! Power up your workflow   Overview Automations allow you to configure custom trigger-action workflows directly within your Airtable base. This will allow you and your team ...

[Joseph_Wheeler]

Hey Everyone,

Thanks for the responses. I was a bit annoyed about this but now I’m actually livid. Airtable has put a separate limit on the number of automation runs (which was never listed anywhere when I first started using the automation tool) and now all my automations have stopped running for the past week now. Unlike other programs, Airtable has not sent any notifications to me to let me know the automations haven’t run and it’s now screwed up workflows for both myself and businesses that I work with.

Love airable but someone needs to get this sorted asap and if the automations cannot scale with a base then don’t offer them at all.

[Ambroise_Dhenai]

Discovered this lovely surprise today as well. Anyone knows if the limit can be increased anyhow?

Yet another reason for us to migrate to NocoDB as soon as possible.

[Bill_French]

Ambroise_Dhenain:

Anyone knows if the limit can be increased anyhow?

Yes - every client of mine that has asked for a doubling of the limit has been granted this request. Contact support.

[Ambroise_Dhenai]

Well, that guy is either lying or misinformed then - as he’s confirmed me the limit cannot be lifted. (or maybe we’d need an Enterprise account, but then he should have told me so)

[Michael_Andrew]

I asked and was told directly I needed to have an enterprise account for them to raise the limit.

@Bill.French are all those clients enterprise level?

[Bill_French]

Yes, I believe they are enterprise accounts. But, as Phil said, “he’d be happy to help”, but yet provides no help.

Indeed, it’s very possible that they were granting some pro accounts with additional actions but have since stopped that policy. And I get it - they’re being cautious about compute resources and costs.

Here’s a fact though - if you are using a $24 and need more than 25 automations, you are free to use Integromat and Zapier’s free tiers.

I see a lot of systems that are designed in ways that are woefully inefficient in terms of the data model and the perceived automation processes required. Is it possible your solution could be optimized?

Lastly, Phil says…

create up to 25 actions in one automation…

But, in practice, keeping all those actions under the CPU time ceiling is pretty difficult, so I see that as a potentially bad idea.