Reached The 100,000 Airtable Record Limit? Try This

Airtable is a spreadsheet-database hybrid designed for small companies. For many businesses, Airtable is a better alternative to MS Excel and Google Sheets, thanks to its range of functions, customizability, and integrations. Today, over 300,000 companies use this tool, and 30% of them are premium users.

But, even the most expensive subscription plan has a record limit, which is 100,000 rows. (Each table you create in Airtable also has a hard column limit of 500). If you are an Airtable user with a thriving business, you might reach this record limit sooner than expected. If your customer database is growing steadily, or you have to store larger data logs generated every month, Airtable might not look like a long-term solution.

But wait! What if we told you that you can keep using Airtable and solve the 100K record limit problem at the same time?

Let's explore Airtable's record limits and learn how Gigasheet can help you avoid the "over limits" warning without losing any of your business data. Gigasheet is the big data sheet, which allows you to open and analyze large csv files online for free.

Airtable Record Limits Explained

If you have been using Airtable for your business, you might be aware that your Airtable subscription is subject to the following record limits:

Free Plan:

1200 records per base

1200 records per table

2 GB attachment space per base

Plus Plan:

5000 records per base

5000 records per table

5 GB attachment space per base

Pro Plan:

50,000 records per base

50,000 records per table

20 GB attachment space per base

Enterprise Plan:

250,000 records per base

100,000 records per table

1000 GB attachment space per base

The maximum number of records you can have in a table is 100,000 as per Airtable's 'Enterprise' plan. This plan also specifies that you can have 250,00 records in one base (database), which is the space where all your tables are stored.

So, if you use the Enterprise plan, you can create unlimited bases on your workspace. Each of these bases has a 250,000 record limit. Let us assume you have one base with three tables. Now, if one of these tables has 100,000 records and another table has 75,000 records, then you can add up to 75,000 records in the third table.

If you attempt to add more rows, you will get an over-limits warning and an "over limits" badge will be displayed on your dashboard.

What to do When Airtable Gives You an Over Record Limits Warning?

First, go to the workspace settings associated with your base and check the usage data. If you have exceeded the row limit, you will see the over limits badge next to your base. Else, you will see the name of your base along with the number of records and the attachment space usage.

If you see an over limits warning or feel that you might be close to touching the maximum row limit for your base, don't worry! Here are some ways to work around it.

Use Gigasheet to Solve the Airtable Record Limit Problem

Step 1: Add your data to your Gigasheet account

To work around Airtable's 100K row limit, all you need to do is create a free Gigasheet account.

Download your Airtable data as a CSV file and save it on your local drive or your cloud storage. Next, upload it to your Gigasheet account. Once you are able to view your CSV file in your Gigasheet library, you can start working on reducing the number of records.

Step 2: Remove unnecessary records

To reduce the size of your dataset, remove any records that are redundant, empty, or no longer needed.

And if you are worried about how long this process will take, Gigasheet provides three quick ways to delete rows from large datasets.

For example, you might have 16K employee records that look something like this when uploaded to Gigasheet:

Now, you have decided that employee records for the year 2020 are no longer needed. So, you can add a filter to select and preview these records.

Once you apply this filter, you will get only those records where the work year is set to 2020. Next, just to check if all records are from the year 2020, you can add a Group By function. And sure enough, when we group by work year, we get a single group.

Now, it is safe to delete this group altogether. Click on Data Cleanup -> Delete Matching Rows.

You will get a pop-up asking you to confirm if you want to proceed with the deletion. Since row deletion is permanent, click Yes only if you are satisfied with the results of your filter.

Once you click yes, you will be left with the following groups, which contain the records you need. And with just a few clicks, you successfully reduced the size of your table by 469 records.

Step 3: Export your data as a CSV file

Use Gigasheet's export feature to download your squeaky-clean dataset as a handy CSV file. Here's how you export your data.

Remember that the export feature will export all columns and rows displayed in the current result set. So, make sure your necessary filters are applied, and all your columns are set to visible.

What's more, you can use the inverse of these filters to preserve data.

Step 4: Import the CSV file into your Airtable base

Open the new CSV file and check if everything is in order. If not, go to your Gigasheet data library, check your filters and columns, and download the file again.

Next, you can use any of these four ways to import the CSV file into your Airtable base.

If the number of records still surpasses the per-table row limit, you can split the contents across multiple tables.

View & Analyze Large Datasets Without Row Limits!

Gigasheet is an easy-to-use, cloud-based tool that simplifies your data management needs - without any restrictions on row limit. And it is free to use.

To use Gigasheet, you do not need any coding experience or data analysis knowledge. Whether you are a student or a small business owner, you can quickly and easily import, view, merge, and analyze data files.

Sign up for your free Gigasheet account