Should I poll or use a webhook to pick up changes?

Polling asks every X minutes if anything is new, a webhook pushes the change into your flow. Webhook is almost always faster and cheaper, but not every source offers it.

Try this first

1. 1Check first whether the source API offers webhooks. If yes, pick it. Latency is seconds instead of minutes and you pay no quota for empty checks.
2. 2Polling can make sense when the source has no webhook or when you are throttled on pushes. Don't set the poll interval lower than needed, every run is a task.
3. 3When polling, store a cursor (last-seen id or timestamp) so you only fetch new records and don't trigger 1000 duplicates.
4. 4Webhook flows need an endpoint that is always live. Plan a fallback poll once per hour to catch missed webhooks.
5. 5Do the math in tasks or operations: 1 webhook a day is near free, polling every minute is 43,200 runs per month.

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