How to export an entire Airtable base

The short answer

Airtable has no “export base” button. Its help center is direct about it: a full base can't be exported as a single file, and each table has to be downloaded as its own CSV. That's fine for a base with two tables. With fifteen tables, or attachments you care about, it gets slow and easy to get wrong.

Option 1: download a CSV per table (free, by hand)

1. Open the table and pick a grid view with no filters. A CSV only contains the records the view shows.
2. Unhide every field. Airtable's rule is that “all field values visible in the view” are exported, so a hidden field is a missing column.
3. Click the small arrow next to the view's name and choose Download CSV. This works in the web and desktop apps, not on mobile.
4. Repeat for every table, and name the files so you can tell them apart later.

What this leaves behind:

• Attachment files. The CSV holds each file's name and a link, and those links expire after a few hours. Six months later, you have filenames and nothing else.
• The structure. Field types, select options and which tables link to which aren't in a CSV. Rebuilding a base from CSVs means setting every field up again by hand.
• Comments, field descriptions and the base guide. Airtable lists these as not included.

If someone shared the view with you, its creator can switch the download off. On Enterprise plans an admin can too.

Option 2: script it with Airtable's API (free, technical)

Airtable's Web API can list every table and read every record, which is how every export tool works. Open-source scripts such as airtable-export do this well if you're comfortable with Python or a GitHub Action. Things to plan for:

• A personal access token with only schema.bases:read and data.records:read, limited to the bases you're exporting.
• Rate limits: 5 requests a second per base. A request returns up to 100 records, so a 20,000-record base takes about 200 requests.
• Monthly API caps on Free workspaces (1,000 calls a month). A big base, exported often, can run into them.
• Attachments are links that expire, so the script has to download each file straight away. Most simple scripts skip this.

Option 3: one ZIP of the whole base (free, no account)

We built a free one-time export for exactly this. Sign in with Airtable (or paste a read-only token), pick a base, and download a single ZIP:

• a CSV per table, ready for Excel, Sheets or re-importing;
• a JSON per table, with every value and record ID;
• schema.json, listing every table, field, type and option, so the structure survives;
• the attachment files, filed by table and record (up to 250 MB on the free export).

It reads at Airtable's rate limit, so a large base takes a minute, and it handles bases of up to 50,000 records. The data streams from Airtable straight into your download; we don't keep a copy. It can't include automations, interfaces or view filters, because Airtable's API doesn't expose them to anyone. It doesn't copy record comments either.

Which one to use

• One small table, once: Download CSV.
• A whole base, once (before a migration, a client handover or cancelling a plan): the free ZIP export, so you keep the structure and the files.
• Every day, without thinking about it: a scheduled backup. An export is a photo of today; a backup also tells you what changed since yesterday. See how to back up Airtable for every option, free ones included.

Questions

Sources, checked October 15, 2026: Airtable: views and CSV download · Airtable: API rate limits · Airtable: API call limits. Nightclerk is not affiliated with Airtable. Compare backup options.