# External Data Sources Don't Automatically Refresh?

**URL:** <https://community.hubspot.com/t/external-data-sources-dont-automatically-refresh/146093>\
**Category:** Data Hub\
**Tags:** datasets\
**Created:** [February 11, 2026, 10:50am UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/external-data-sources-dont-automatically-refresh/146093 "2026-02-11T10:50:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 5

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**Author:** ![danmoyle](https://d10pqhm3lwygmk.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/community.hubspot.com/danmoyle/32/91166_2.png) [@danmoyle](https://community.hubspot.com/u/danmoyle)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2026, 7:26pm UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/external-data-sources-dont-automatically-refresh/146093/5 "2026-02-18T19:26:28Z")

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Hi @SGross27. From my admitedly limited experience with the rleatively new tools, I do believ this is expected behavior right now, and it’s mostly about how HubSpot’s Data Studio layer refreshes, not something “wrong” with your Google Sheet or the external data source itself. When I looked around a bit, here’s what I found on how the refresh works.

When you connect Google Sheets as an external data source via Data Studio in HubSpot, HubSpot’s documentation and other community resources seem to suggest that the sheet is ingested on a schedule (HubSpot mentions roughly every 5 minutes for many external sources as @JDAgostino mentioned, though this can vary by connector and load). However, the HubSpot datasets and reports built on top of that external source do not update in real time; for example, HubSpot’s custom report builder has its own 1–2+ hour refresh rhythm and rate limits on manual refreshes. Looker Studio / Google Data Studio itself also uses a cache with a freshness window; even when you hit refresh in a report, it may respect a data freshness threshold rather than pulling your sheet instantly, depending on its configuration.

What this tells me is that the external source refresh and the report refresh are separate steps: the external source may be up to date, but the dataset/report that you’re viewing may still be serving cached data on its own schedule. Google Sheets itself also has its own recalculation and caching, so formulas or imported ranges may lag a bit, which then cascades into what Data Studio/HubSpot see.

You’ve probably done extensive testing, but here’s what I’d test. To confirm things are working as intended, test in this order:

1. Open the Google Sheet directly and confirm the values you expect.
2. In Data Studio / HubSpot external data sources area, check the preview of the external source to see if those values match there. If they do, then the ingestion is working.
3. Then check the dataset and finally the report that uses that dataset; if these are behind, it’s almost certainly the reporting refresh cadence, not the sheet.

So I think right now it’s a matter of treating the HubSpot reports as near‑real‑time but not live. Expect delays on the order of tens of minutes to a couple of hours, depending on which reporting tool you use. Then I’d suggest using _manual refresh_ on reports only when you really need it, understanding that it can still be constrained by caching and HubSpot’s own limits.

Not the best answer based on your use case, but I hope it at least confirms some of what you’re seeing.

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