Too many records for base

[Taly_Matiteyahu]

I have an airtable base with member data, including a table with basic member data and another table with scheduling selections each member makes that I then use a look up to connect. With over 50K schedule requests, I've been "over" the record limit in my base for a while. I now can't seem to add more and have hit a hard cap. Enterprise pricing is out of reach, I don't want to delete historical data because the members' usage over time is important data, and it seems like I can't separate the tables into two bases and connect them the same way using a look up. Is there any solution here or am I out of luck? 🥲

[Ron_Williams · Accepted solution]

@Taly_Matiteyahu 

The 50K record limit is per table, not per base. I separate entries by year or quarter in separate tables, linked them all to a master table (in my case it was sales linked to a customer list) and used a combination of roll up fields and formula fields to give me the info I needed like last purchase date, total spent, total purchases, etc. At this time, I have 298K records between 11 tables in the same base. It does take a bit to load, but you can speed up viewing data by using an interface. If you have any questions about doing this let me know. 

[ScottWorld]

On the Pro Plan, the record limit is actually 50,000 records per base (not table). So I'm not sure how you were able to get 298,000 records in a base! That's pretty cool, though!

[Ron_Williams]

 50K hard limit per table not base. 

[Taly_Matiteyahu]

Holy heck, I had no idea this was a workaround. I just made a separate table and added the scheduling selections I couldn't add before there. I still have to make a bunch of new roll ups & formulas to combine the data from the two tables, which is a bit annoying. I have a bunch of columns to pull "last submission" / "first submission" / "last month submitted" etc from the linked table... and now I need to basically duplicate that for the new table and then combine the sets of data via another bunch of columns... but I'm excited to have a way to get all the data in one base regardless! Thank you!

[ScottWorld]

@Ron_Williams It looks like Airtable isn't strictly enforcing their records limits that they list on their pricing page. I'm just curious -- are you on a Pro workspace or an Enterprise workspace? On Airtable's pricing page, Enterprise workspaces have a stated limit of 250,000 records per base (with a maximum of 100,000 records per table). Pro workspaces have a stated limit of 50,000 records for the entire base.

[ScottWorld]

Oh, never mind... from your screenshot, I can tell that you're on a Pro Plan. That's pretty amazing!

[Karlstens]

This is also news to me. Did Airtable get their base and table terminology wrong in their workspace settings? 🤦🏻‍

... either way, I can't help but wonder - Just because we can, doesn't mean we should. 250,000+ records in a single base, I reckon there be dragons there! 🐉

[ScottWorld]

Totally agree with @Karlstens! if they start strictly enforcing the actual limit, there could be problems. And even if they don’t enforce the limit, their infrastructure may not be able to handle that many records. 

[Ron_Williams]

I believe the limits are there for maximum efficacy, similar to the attachment limit or API limits. The base does take longer to load the more records you have and the initial slow loading can be annoying at times. That being said, Ive been using bases over the limits (and pushing the limits of Airtable) for almost 3 years now. With the exception of slower initial loading time, I have not experienced any unexpected gremlins.

I feel like there are workarounds for almost all of the airtable limits. For example, I have 7 pro accounts that I switch all of my bases between throughout the month because I have several hundred thousand automations that run each month and when an account reaches the 50K run limit, I switch the bases to another account. It's a 10 minute inconvenience, but still hundreds cheaper a month than enterprise. 

I agree this is probably not best practice and as @ScottWorld said that may enforce the limits someday which will cause problems. I guess it all depends on use case. For me, this base is historical data that could be on an excel spreadsheet. I just prefer it being in Airtable.