diff --git a/CHANGES.md b/CHANGES.md
index 4b1aec1..2e0ab34 100644
--- a/CHANGES.md
+++ b/CHANGES.md
@@ -6,6 +6,8 @@
 - MongoDB: Add support for UUID types
 - MongoDB: Improve reading timestamps in previous BSON formats
 - MongoDB: Fix processing empty arrays/lists. By default, assume `TEXT` as inner type.
+- MongoDB: For `ctk load table`, use "partial" scan for inferring the collection schema,
+  based on the first 10,000 documents.
 
 ## 2024/09/02 v0.0.21
 - DynamoDB: Add special decoding for varied lists.
diff --git a/cratedb_toolkit/io/mongodb/api.py b/cratedb_toolkit/io/mongodb/api.py
index c4b2d20..7ae679b 100644
--- a/cratedb_toolkit/io/mongodb/api.py
+++ b/cratedb_toolkit/io/mongodb/api.py
@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ def mongodb_copy(source_url, target_url, transformation: Path = None, limit: int
         url=str(mongodb_uri),
         database=mongodb_database,
         collection=mongodb_collection,
-        scan="full",
+        scan="partial",
         transformation=transformation,
         limit=limit,
     )
diff --git a/cratedb_toolkit/io/mongodb/extract.py b/cratedb_toolkit/io/mongodb/extract.py
index 9872a50..f7f735e 100644
--- a/cratedb_toolkit/io/mongodb/extract.py
+++ b/cratedb_toolkit/io/mongodb/extract.py
@@ -85,6 +85,10 @@
 )
 
 
+# TODO: Make configurable.
+PARTIAL_SCAN_COUNT = 10_000
+
+
 def extract_schema_from_collection(collection: Collection, partial: bool, limit: int = 0) -> t.Dict[str, t.Any]:
     """
     Extract a schema definition from a collection.
@@ -95,7 +99,7 @@ def extract_schema_from_collection(collection: Collection, partial: bool, limit:
 
     schema: dict = {"count": 0, "document": {}}
     if partial:
-        count = 1
+        count = PARTIAL_SCAN_COUNT
     else:
         count = collection.estimated_document_count()
     with progressbar:
@@ -105,7 +109,7 @@ def extract_schema_from_collection(collection: Collection, partial: bool, limit:
                 schema["count"] += 1
                 schema["document"] = extract_schema_from_document(document, schema["document"])
                 progressbar.update(task, advance=1)
-                if partial:
+                if partial and schema["count"] >= PARTIAL_SCAN_COUNT:
                     break
         except KeyboardInterrupt:
             return schema