How Often Does Airtable Sync?

Your Airtable synced table is showing old data, and you cannot tell whether the sync is slow, stuck or capped by your plan. Airtable’s help center gives different answers for different sources: between Airtable bases an automatic sync is real time, integrations such as Google Calendar and Google Drive sync around every 5 minutes, and the Salesforce sync runs around every hour. This page tables those timings, the limits for each plan and the documented causes of a sync that has stopped. Everything comes from Airtable’s help center, checked on October 21, 2026.

How often does Airtable sync?

Airtable does not have one sync interval. It has automatic and manual modes, and the speed of automatic depends on where the data comes from.

Source	Automatic sync	Manual sync
Another Airtable base	Real time (periodic for time-based formula fields and tables with customized linked records)	Sync now, any paid plan
Google Calendar, Google Drive	Around every 5 minutes	Sync now
Other integrations (general rule)	As frequently as every 5 minutes, but may take longer at times	Sync now
Salesforce report	Around every hour	Sync now
Two-way sync between bases	Edits may take a few minutes to propagate in both directions	Do not set it to manual (see below)
Free plan workspace	Airtable Sync is not available	Not available

Source: Airtable Help Center, “Getting started with Airtable sync” and the Google Calendar, Google Drive and Salesforce sync integration articles, checked Oct 21, 2026.

Two details from Airtable’s sync overview change how you plan around these numbers. First, you can still run a manual sync on a table that is set to automatic: open the synced table’s dropdown and click Sync now. Second, a sync set to automatic does not run forever by itself. Airtable says automatic syncs eventually stop on bases that have no recent activity, and the fix it gives is to make sure something changes in the destination base on a regular basis, through people, an automation or the API.

Airtable’s setting offers automatic or manual. We found no option to enter your own number of minutes in any of the pages we read.

What are Airtable’s sync limits by plan?

Team allows 10 synced tables per base, and Business and Enterprise Scale allow 20. The Free plan has no Airtable Sync.

Limit	Team	Business	Enterprise Scale
Sync sources per table	10	20	20
Sync sources per base	50	50	50
Synced tables per base	10	20	20
Automatic syncing	Yes	Yes	Yes
Multi-source sync	Yes	Yes	Yes
Two-way sync	No	Yes	Yes
Integration types	Standard only	Standard and Premium	Standard, Premium and on-premises
Records per base	50,000	125,000	Not on the plans page we read
Verdict	Fine for a few one-way feeds	Pick this for two-way or Salesforce	Pick this for on-premises sources

Source: Airtable Help Center, “Getting started with Airtable sync” and “Airtable plans overview”, checked Oct 21, 2026. Free: no Airtable Sync, 1,000 records per base. Limits apply to current plans; legacy plans keep what they were sold and can differ. Our Airtable pricing and limits page has the full plan sheet.

The same article lists limits that apply on every plan:

General limit	Value
Reads from one source base	400 per minute
Share views with sync turned on, per base	100
Records per integrated sync source	10,000 (does not apply to base-to-base syncs)
Size of a sync source’s schema	2 MB
Attachments in one cell	About 1,000
Records and attachments in the destination	Count toward the destination base’s own limits

Source: Airtable Help Center, “Getting started with Airtable sync”, checked Oct 21, 2026.

Source-specific caps sit on top of these. The Salesforce sync allows 10,000 rows and 100 columns, and one Google Calendar sync can bring in at most 10,000 events. For base-to-base syncs, the real ceiling is the record cap of the destination plan. If you are weighing Airtable’s caps against other CRMs, the CRM import limits comparison lays out the same kind of numbers for other platforms.

How do you sync Airtable between bases?

Syncing between bases starts in the source base with a grid view. Airtable only supports syncing from grid views, so a kanban or calendar view cannot be the source.

1. Open the grid view you want to share, click Share and sync, choose Sync data to another base and turn on Allow data in this view to be synced to other bases.
2. Click Sync this view to pick a destination base, or Copy shared view link to give the link to someone who builds the destination.
3. In the destination base, click + Add or import, then choose Airtable base under Add from other sources.
4. Choose all fields or specific fields, then set the sync frequency to automatic or manual and decide whether deleted records are removed or kept.
5. Click Create table. The table takes the name of the source view, so rename it if that helps.

You need creator permission in the destination base, and Airtable says editors can configure share links but cannot set up destination syncs. The primary field is fixed once the sync is created, so decide it before you click Create table. If you later need a different one, you create a new synced table.

New to this plan limit? A sync that shows the error “Unable to sync this source. This table exceeds the synced tables per base limit.” is covered in the fixes table below.

Is Airtable sync two-way?

Airtable sync is one way by default. Two-way sync between Airtable bases needs Business or Enterprise Scale and a setting called Allow edits from other bases in the source view.

With two-way on, edits made in a target table or an interface in another base sync back to the single source table. Edits made in one target reach other targets only after they first sync back to the source, on the next sync. Airtable’s two-way sync article lists the limits that trip people up:

• A view with more than 200,000 cells (for example 10,000 records by 20 fields) cannot be a two-way source.
• Attachment fields are always read-only in a two-way target.
• Edits made through Airtable’s API in a target base are not accepted, so a third-party app that writes through the API sees its change revert.
• Fields added in a target do not sync back to the source.
• Setting the sync frequency to Only sync changes when requested, or setting deletion to Leave the records in this table, breaks the two-way behavior and turns it into a one-way sync.

Sync integrations from outside apps are a different case. Airtable’s integrations overview states they are always one way from the external application into Airtable, so changes made in Airtable cannot be synced back. For Salesforce, Airtable points to its Create record and Update record automation actions for sending data back, and warns against using them to imitate a two-way sync. If you do need two systems to stay level in both directions, our CRM integrations guide covers the options.

Does Airtable sync with Google Sheets?

Airtable Sync does not list Google Sheets as a source. The integrations overview groups the sync sources into three tiers, and none of them is Sheets.

Tier	Sources	Plans
Standard	Box, Google Drive, Google Calendar, GitHub Issues, GitHub Pull Requests, Miro	All paid plans
Premium	Emailed Data, Sync API, Tableau Online, Jira Cloud, Salesforce, Zendesk	Business and Enterprise Scale
On-premises	Jira Server/Data Center, Adobe Experience Manager	Enterprise Scale

Source: Airtable Help Center, “Airtable sync integrations overview”, checked Oct 21, 2026.

So a Sheets connection means something else: a third-party connector, an automation or a script against the API. We have not tested any of those, so we cannot give you an interval for them, and each tool sets its own. If the real goal is moving off Airtable, the path is different, and moving Airtable to monday.com is a separate job from syncing. The same goes for linking Airtable to a CRM: see how to connect Airtable to HubSpot and whether monday.com integrates with Airtable.

Why is my Airtable sync not working?

Check the table for an error icon first, then match what you see against the documented causes below.

What you see	Documented cause	Fix
Synced table has not updated in a while, source looks fine	Automatic syncs stop on a destination base with no recent activity	Choose Sync now from the table dropdown, then keep activity going with edits, scheduled automations or API updates
Error icon on the synced table, source is another Airtable base	The share link was removed or regenerated, or the source settings changed	Create a new syncable view share link, then in the destination open Update sync configuration and paste it. Regenerating affects every sync that depends on that view
“Unable to sync this source. Unable to sync new data.”	Most often a broken connection. For an external source, the account connection may need renewing	Reconnect the external account, or remove it and add it again. If it persists, create a new table from the same source. Check the source’s size against the limits
“Unable to sync this source. This table exceeds the synced tables per base limit.”	The workspace is on Free, or the base already has 10 (Team) or 20 (Business, Enterprise Scale) synced tables	Move to a paid plan, or remove a synced table or spread syncs across more bases
“Field does not exist in every source”	In a two-way table, a source has no two-way syncable field mapped to the target field	Open Edit synced fields under each source, turn the field on and map it. Every source needs Allow edits from other bases
A field is missing from the synced table	The field is switched off under Edit synced fields, is an unsupported type, or is empty in an integrated app that withholds empty fields	Check Edit synced fields, the field type and whether the source field holds a value
“Unable to import synced table. There was an error importing the synced table. Unknown error.”	Shown when creating a table, not on an existing sync	Check the share link is still active, confirm creator permission in both bases, try another view, wait a few minutes and retry
Salesforce sync paused: “Salesforce instance reached its total hourly API quota”	Too many synced tables query the same Salesforce instance	Click Sync Now, then set more syncs to manual
Google Drive: “Quota exceeded for quota metric ‘queries’ and limit ‘queries per minute’”	Google’s API rate limit across syncs on one connected Google account	Switch lower-priority syncs to manual
Sync paused after the person who built it left	The shared view is domain-restricted and the user lost access to the source base	Have an admin set up important syncs

Source: Airtable Help Center, “Troubleshooting syncs in Airtable”, “Getting started with Airtable sync”, and the Salesforce and Google Drive sync integration articles, checked Oct 21, 2026.

Airtable’s troubleshooting article also asks for the source’s approximate row count, the full error text and the last time the sync worked when you contact support. Viewing sync settings needs creator or owner permission in the destination base, so an editor cannot see the source details.

How many records can Airtable sync?

The cap depends on the source. Integrated sources stop at 10,000 records each, and base-to-base syncs are limited by the destination plan.

A synced record is a real record in the destination, so it counts against that base’s plan limit. Airtable’s example is a 1,000-record view that uses 1,000 records of the destination’s total, and the same applies to attachments. On Free that leaves little room, because the plans overview lists 1,000 records per base, and Free cannot use Airtable Sync anyway. Team lists 50,000 and Business 125,000, as of the day we checked. Airtable’s plans overview is the page to recheck before a large sync.

Records leave a synced table when they are deleted in the source or stop matching the source view’s filter, and the deletion setting decides whether the destination copy goes too. When a record is removed, any link pointing at it clears and lookups through that link go blank. Lock the source view on a paid plan so nobody edits its filters by accident.

When to get help

A single one-way sync of one table is a ten-minute job you can do from the steps above. Get help when several bases feed one another, when two-way sync, interfaces and automations all touch the same synced table, or when sync limits are shaping how you split data across bases. Our Airtable implementation service designs those multi-base setups, and you can ask us a question before you commit. If Airtable’s limits are the reason you are looking, the monday CRM vs Airtable comparison shows where the two differ. Airtable API traffic is also limited separately, and the CRM API rate limits comparison sets it against other platforms.

Founder’s note, Alpit Patel. Sync limits surprise teams after launch, not before. I’d check the synced-table count and the record cap for your plan on day one. I founded aibrevo in San Francisco in 2021, and through autoesta I have overseen 320+ GoHighLevel implementation projects across med spas, real estate, healthcare, dental, home services, SaaS and professional-services clients in the US, UK and UAE. About Alpit

Sources

• Airtable Help Center, Getting started with Airtable sync, checked Oct 21, 2026.
• Airtable Help Center, Airtable sync integrations overview, checked Oct 21, 2026.
• Airtable Help Center, Troubleshooting syncs in Airtable, checked Oct 21, 2026.
• Airtable Help Center, Two-way syncing in Airtable, checked Oct 21, 2026.
• Airtable Help Center, Airtable Sync integration: Salesforce, checked Oct 21, 2026.
• Airtable Help Center, Airtable Sync integration: Google Drive and Google Calendar, checked Oct 21, 2026.
• Airtable Help Center, Airtable plans overview, checked Oct 21, 2026.