Why Does My Connection Always Sync Several Minutes After the Scheduled Time?

Question

Why does my connection always sync minutes after the scheduled sync time?

Environment

All connectors

Answer

Fivetran assigns a fixed time offset when you create a new destination or connection. The offset is derived from the destination ID hash and can be any value between 0 and 60 minutes. All connections associated with the same destination share this offset, and it remains constant regardless of the sync frequency you set.

We use this offset to stagger sync start times across destinations and reduce compute load at the top of each hour.

If you want your connection to sync at a specific time, you can create a custom sync schedule using the Fivetran REST API (Free, Standard, Enterprise and Business Critical accounts only). Learn how in our How to Set a Custom Sync Frequency Troubleshooting page. Additionally, you can utilize Fivetran's downstream transformations to ensure that your transformations execute only after the sync has been completed.