I recently moved my primary Airtable workspace to Notion after using Airtable for several years to manage my personal CRM and project data. I was frustrated with juggling multiple tools for my workflow.
Initially, I attempted using CSV export and import. This completely destroyed all my linked record relationships, turning everything into flat, disconnected data files. All the connections between my projects, tasks, and clients were gone. I was facing hours of manual reconnection work and almost gave up on the migration.
Then I remembered a synchronization tool called whalesync that I had used before for two-way data syncing. I realized that if this tool can maintain relationships during sync operations, it might work for one-time data migration too.
I configured field mappings between my Airtable base and new Notion databases, letting whalesync handle the creation of tables, properties, and relationships. The crucial advantage is that it properly recognizes Airtable’s ‘Linked Records’ as Notion ‘Relations’, something the standard import process fails to handle.
After activation, the process took some time to initialize but worked flawlessly. My complete dataset now exists in Notion with all relationships intact. My project database still connects properly to my client database.
Whalesync requires payment for extended use, but they provide a 14-day trial period that was sufficient for this migration task.
This approach saved me weeks of work when I migrated three interconnected bases from Airtable to Notion earlier this year. The key insight about whalesync maintaining relationship integrity is spot on - most migration tools treat relations as simple text fields which breaks everything.
One consideration that caught me off guard was field type compatibility. Airtable’s formula fields don’t translate directly to Notion’s formula syntax, so those need manual recreation afterward. Same goes for some of the more advanced field types like rollups and lookups - they often become read-only reference fields in Notion.
The pricing structure actually worked in my favor since I only needed the migration window. I kept the sync active for about a week after the initial transfer to catch any data I missed, then cancelled before the trial ended. Worth noting that you can export your Notion database afterward as backup since you’ll lose the sync connection.
Nice find! I went through something similar last year when moving client data from Airtable to Notion for my team.
One thing to watch out for - whalesync can sometimes struggle with complex many-to-many relationships if you have nested linked records. I ran into this when migrating a project database that had tasks linked to both clients AND team members. Had to clean up some duplicate relations manually afterward.
Also heads up that their trial has a record limit (think it was 1000 rows when I used it). If your base is bigger, you might need to split the migration into chunks or bite the bullet on the subscription for a month.
For anyone considering this approach, test it on a copy of your base first. I learned that lesson the hard way when a sync got stuck halfway through and left me with partial data.