Techniques are provided for automatic parallelism tuning. At least one batch of change records is assigned to one or more apply processes in a set of active apply processes. A first throughput value is periodically determined based on a number of processed change records in a first time interval. An increment adjustment is periodically performed, including adding an additional apply process, determining a second throughput value, and removing the additional apply process from the set of active apply processes if the second throughput value is not greater than a previous first throughput value by at least an increment threshold. A decrement adjustment is periodically performed, including removing an apply process, determining a third throughput value, and replacing the removed apply process in the set of active apply processes if the third throughput value is not greater than the previous first throughput value by at least a decrement threshold.