Experts: Solution for more than 50,000 records?

[Molly_Bendell1]

Has anyone solved the issue with having more than 50,000 or even 100,000 active records (what I’m told by Airtable is the top paid plan max) that technically need to fall under one base?
I’ve talked to Airtable support and looked around the forums, but haven’t found any solutions. The only thing I can figure is to archive dead or completed records and move them to their own base. However, that messes up our ability to view holistic data sets such as financials over time or to easily slide a record back into the active workflow as is required time to time, and essentially leads to no better a system than many Excel spreadsheets. I’ve thought about it using the API, but with the record limit stemming from Airtable, there’s no way around it besides building our own database. Thanks.

[Bill_French]

Hi Molly,

I have achieved million+ item lists by combining Firebase (or ElasticSearch) with Airtable. But the use cases must be tolerant of latency. As data ebbs and flows between live and at-rest states, it must also overcome API rate limits. We can pull from Firebase and ElasticSearch at blistering speeds but pushing it into view in Airtable is constrained a bit.

One way I’ve overcome the challenges of squeezing a million items into Airtable is the addition of a search app running as an embedded block. This makes it possible for users to form ad-hoc queries and transform the results into Airtable views with a click.

Another method I’ve explored is to create proxy categories in Airtable records that represent classes of record collections. A checked class is essentially work order for the back end to move that collection of records into scope.

Lots of devils in this approach - requires careful planning.

[Molly_Bendell]

Hi Bill - Thanks for your response. Are you available for hire to help us set up something like you described? If so, please email me at molly@buwit.com to discuss further. Thank you!