Yes, partly. Airtable keeps automatic snapshots of every base, a 7-day trash, and revision history for each record. All three are stored inside Airtable and restored from inside Airtable. They protect you from mistakes made in a base. They don't give you a copy you can keep, open elsewhere, or reach without your Airtable account.
Base snapshots
A snapshot is a saved state of a whole base. Airtable takes them automatically: bases used heavily get at least one a day, bases used lightly get fewer. Editors and creators can also take a snapshot by hand from the base history menu, which is worth doing right before a large import or restructure.
How long Airtable keeps snapshots depends on the workspace's plan:
| Plan | Snapshot history |
|---|---|
| Free | 2 weeks |
| Team | 1 year |
| Business | 2 years |
| Enterprise Scale | 3 years |
Restoring a snapshot
Open the base, choose the base history icon, select a snapshot, name the new base and create it. Restoring always makes a new base. The original stays as it is. You need creator permission in the workspace you restore into.
The restored base keeps its record, table and view IDs and its record comments, but it gets a new base ID and starts with no revision history. Anything that points at the old base, such as automations in other bases, integrations, shared links, or an API key's scope, has to be pointed at the new one.
Trash
Deleted records, fields, tables, views and extensions stay in the base's trash for 7 days, and an editor can restore them from the base history menu. Deleted bases and workspaces stay in the workspace trash for 30 days, or up to 180 days on Enterprise Scale.
After that, the only way back is a snapshot taken before the deletion. See how to recover deleted records.
Record revision history
Each record keeps a history of changes to its cells, which you can see in the expanded record. Free workspaces see 2 weeks of history, Team 1 year and Business 2 years. Revision history is useful for finding out who changed a value and what it was before; restoring many records this way is slow.
What snapshots don't protect against
Snapshots are good at undoing changes. They don't help when the problem is access to Airtable itself:
- The workspace or account is gone. Once a deleted base or workspace leaves the trash, or you lose access to the account, its snapshots are out of reach too.
- The plan changes. Snapshot history follows the workspace's plan; on Free it's two weeks.
- The mistake is older than your history. On the Free plan, anything older than two weeks is out of reach.
- You need the data outside Airtable. Snapshots can't be downloaded, opened in a spreadsheet, given to an auditor or imported into another tool.
- Attachments from an earlier plan. Airtable notes that if a snapshot's attachment retention period ran out under a previous plan, its attachments may be permanently unavailable.
Snapshots vs. an outside backup
| Airtable snapshot | Outside backup | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it's stored | Inside Airtable | Your storage, or the backup provider's |
| Can you download it? | No | Yes |
| Restores into Airtable | One click, as a new base | Import, or the provider's restore tool |
| Survives losing the workspace | No | Yes |
| Interfaces | Yes | No, the API doesn't expose them |
| Cost | Included | Paid service, or your own time |
Use both. Snapshots are the quickest fix for a mistake made last week. An outside backup is the copy you still have when Airtable isn't available to you. The backup options guide explains how to make one.
Sources: Airtable's support articles on snapshots, trash and record revision history, checked October 17, 2026.