Bubble struggling to process large text files (16MB) – looking for best practice

Need help Database
1

Hi everyone

I’m running into a limitation with Bubble and would really appreciate thoughts from more experienced Bubble developers and automation experts.

What I’m trying to do

I have a plain text (.txt) file that contains a large list of text lines.

I have hundreds of these lists of texts which i seperated using regex + find & replace single text

My goal is to:

  1. Upload the file

  2. Extract the individual lines

  3. Store the texts as a list of texts(this already works by the way) & compare those lines inside Bubble (exact text matching)

This works perfectly when the file is small(say 3kb)

What works

  • Text files around 2–3KB

  • Bubble can extract the text

  • I can split it into lines

  • I can process and save them without issues

What doesn’t work

When the file size increases to ~16MB:

  • Bubble struggles to extract the text

  • Workflows either:

    • timeout

    • fail silently

    • or only process part of the file

  • This happens even when using backend workflows

From what I can tell, Bubble tries to load the entire file into memory, which seems to exceed platform limits.

What I understand so far (please correct me if wrong)

  • Bubble is great for UI and database logic, but not heavy file/text processing

  • Large text operations like splitting or looping over a big text blob are expensive

  • Processing a 16MB text file directly inside Bubble is not reliable

Current approach I’m considering

Instead of letting Bubble process the file directly:

  1. User uploads the large text file

  2. The file is sent to an external automation tool (Make.com or n8n)

  3. The automation tool:

    • reads the file

    • splits it into smaller chunks (e.g. 500 lines at a time)

    • sends those chunks as JSON arrays to Bubble

  4. Bubble receives each small batch via a backend API workflow and processes it safely

What I’m looking for feedback on

  • Is this the recommended / production-safe approach for handling large text files in Bubble?

  • Are there better or simpler architectures you’ve used for similar cases?

  • Has anyone successfully processed large text files entirely inside Bubble without hitting limits?

  • Any gotchas with Make / n8n → Bubble API workflows I should watch out for?

Why I’m asking

I want a solution that is:

  • reliable

  • scalable

  • easy to maintain

  • understandable even for non-technical users later on

I’m less concerned about doing everything “inside Bubble” and more concerned about doing it the right way.

I have added a screenshot of the database that contains some of the extract texts and two sample text files, one 3kb and the other 16mb

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