We’re using Softr internally for business processes — especially HR- and CRM related workflows — and unfortunately, our app has become barely usable. Pages are either extremely slow to load or don’t load at all, even though everything is set up correctly.
Here’s what we’ve already done:
Switched to Personal Access Tokens (PAT) with the correct scopes
Verified that our Airtable is not on the free plan
Confirmed that Airtable API usage is well below the limit
Still, we’re getting little to no help from the Softr support team — only vague responses about Airtable needing to respond to API calls. What really puzzles us is that we’re running a second app using the exact same data logic with Airtable, and it’s working just fine.
We were actually considering upgrading to the Professional Plan, since we’re nearing the limit of active app users. But honestly, if a business-critical app can become unusable — and support can’t (or won’t) help — that’s a strong sign we might need to move away from Softr altogether.
Has anyone else experienced similar issues?
Any insights or ideas on what else we could check?
@Matthias. You’re not wrong about Softr’s integration with Airtable. If you search for performance issues in the community, you will see that it’s been an issue since the beginning.
@artur has talked about improving the connection for about a year now with a proposed real time sync (DSV2) with AT. IMO, this should have been implemented years ago, but instead Softr pivoted to as many other databases as possible. And this year, they’ve released their own database that has a lot of catching up to do.
I’ve been pushing for Softr to release this real time sync with AT, since they mentioned it last year, but they’ve been too busy with a lot of other things unfortuntely, that have obvious conflicts.
Hi @Matthias I’ve been moving my business from Airtable and SmartSuite to Softr and Softr DB. The issues/concerns I had revolved around API speed, and limits. The Softr DB seems to be very responsive, but there are certainly tradeoffs as Softr DB is new and does not have the same functionality as AT or SS. I’ve engaged with support numerous times, and overall they have been quite helpful. I do question some of Softr’s strategy, especially regarding pricing, as your needs grow. Overall I think Softr is doing a good job. While I don’t have any answer for you, I can certainly relate to your overall situation.
Softr database is indeed getting improved daily and hope soon will be matched and beyond
@Matthias@Ben Airtable sync features is in rollout and test phase currently… it takes a bit longer as we need to test is way more then gsheet and notion integrations given AT has certain scale and issues…
Generally airtable has poor API support in a way that requests could take 40 seconds and it’s fine according to them but obviously not fine from API consumer perspective… When it works within Airtable apps it’s their internal API and they make it fast I guess…
Long story short we are rolling out the sync feature which will make it faster and additionally we are developing better and faster database for our builders to consider if they want to.
Thanks for the responses @artur and everyone else — really appreciate the context and insights.
I totally get that things take time to roll out, and it’s good to hear that the Softr database is improving. But for those of us relying on Airtable for now — especially for internal business tools — the current situation is really difficult to manage.
You mentioned that the sync feature is being rolled out. Do you have any estimated timeline for the full release? Even a rough idea would help us plan our next steps.
We’re not trying to be impatient, but when basic functionality becomes unreliable, it’s hard to justify sticking with the platform — especially when you’re operating in a business-critical context.
Team Softr, is there any update on improving Airtable performance? For the many of us using Airtable, it is a critical decision - where do we go from here? Accessing Airtable data from Softr blocks is sometimes unbearably slow. Softr databases allegedly offer better performance, but my app is very complicated and migrating to Softr db would be a huge effort and disruption of service. Also, frankly, Airtable is much more competitively priced than Softr, if we just look at the two products strictly as a db. So, there is a lot of compelling reasons for us to keep using Airtable for the foreseeable future, if Softr can level up its performance.
So, what’s the Airtable roadmap, please tell us. Thank you!
It seems like Softr has finally resolved the issue – after 8 weeks, we can finally use our app again.
I won’t even get into the downtime and the extra workload this caused for our team.
… But anyway – I’d really like to see an Airtable roadmap from Softr – just like @bbelo and, I believe, many other Softr–Airtable users who are currently trying to figure out how to plan their app setup for the future.. It feels like you’re strongly pushing your own database and gradually moving away from Airtable. For us, switching would also mean a major effort and disruption, so we’d appreciate some clarity. Thank you!
There is indeed some performance improvement I am observing in my Airtable based app, particularly with page loading and Edit actions on list blocks. Will continue to test, but fingers crossed, this will remain consistent.
Hi @artur ,
No, I haven’t reached out again via live chat – mainly because over the past 12+ weeks, during which the app has been practically unusable, I’ve already contacted support three times.
Each time, I was told that there’s currently nothing they can do and that we need to wait for the Airtable V2 update. We kept being told that it’s coming “soon,” but nothing has changed, and the situation is still the same.
Really depends where the issue is… sometimes we are able to fix fast sometimes not
Airtable API has been very slow during last 9-12 months and our solution so called V2 is being rolled out now with phases to lower the risk… we just need to trade the speed of delivery here given the bad impact it could have if we rush… Right now it’s rolled out for 5% of blocks and many backend use cases are already 100%.
This all is being said without knowing your exact issue but if you reach via chat then engineering team can look into it.
{“error”:“PUBLIC_API_BILLING_LIMIT_EXCEEDED”,“message”:"API billing plan limit exceeded. You’ve reached the maximum number of requests allowed for this month. Upgrade for higher limits…
API can be rate limited like 10 requests per second etc, but when you see request counts being limited that’s really red flag.
This was also one of the reasons we developed Softr databases which in many aspects should be already better and hope soon it will way better
@artur Thanks for checking.
However, our Airtable dashboard shows a very different picture — no API limit has been exceeded.
We’re on the Team Plan and currently at 5,064 of 100,000 API calls for the month.
The issue has been resolved – big thanks to @artur for stepping in and identifying the root cause
Turns out the problem was a leftover connection to an old template database from Softr that was still linked to our user table and unused pages.
This caused permission errors and unexpected behavior.
Sharing this here in case others run into something similar when starting from a Softr template!
