Trigger (Automation)

A trigger is the event that starts an automation. In a Zap it's the first step: "new payment in Stripe," "new email," "row added." When the trigger's condition is met, the automation runs its downstream actions. A workflow has exactly one trigger, and it does not consume a billable task.

Polling vs instant triggers

The two ways a trigger detects new data behave very differently:

• Polling triggers ask the source app for new data on a fixed interval. Zapier checks as often as every 1 minute or as rarely as every 15 minutes, depending on your plan — the Free plan polls roughly every 15 minutes, while higher tiers poll every 1–5 minutes. New data can therefore wait up to a full interval before the Zap runs.
• Instant triggers rely on a webhook: the source app pushes data the moment an event happens, and the automation fires within seconds — regardless of plan.

Deduplication

Because a polling trigger re-reads recent data every interval, the platform uses deduplication to run only on records it hasn't seen before. Without it, the same payment could start the Zap over and over. Instant triggers avoid this by pushing each event exactly once.

Why the distinction matters

If timing matters — a failed payment, a fraud alert, a new order — an instant, webhook-based trigger is worth prioritizing, because a polling trigger can delay the alert by minutes. For low-urgency syncs, polling is fine and simpler to set up.

ChargeBell is built entirely on instant, event-driven delivery: it listens to Stripe events and posts the alert to Slack in real time, so a failed card or a new subscriber reaches your team right away rather than on the next poll.