
Ask HN: What PostgreSQL client do you use? - iameoghan
There are seemingly a plethora of clients for Postgres [1].<p>What client(s) do HN use day-to-day? Why have you chosen it?<p>I&#x27;m looking for recommendations to use for <i>light</i> usage. Ideally, something that would help build the schema visually.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.postgresql.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;PostgreSQL_Clients
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OJFord
DBeaver.

It suffers from 'oh God this was definitely written in Java, wasn't it', but
it's mostly good.

Then I happened across pgAdmin recently which probably does everything I want
from DBeaver, and has a docker image (it's browser based) but I haven't really
tried it properly. Keep meaning to though, I have a hopeful feeling that it'd
be 100% what I recommended if I had.

~~~
bzzzt
I like some small features in DBeaver like clicking through on a foreign key
takes you to that row in another table. I've seen lots of clients where you
have to write another query.

Written in Java has the advantage of supporting any database which supports
Java (which means every serious database on the planet)

~~~
croo
Those other little features are like you can modify and edit the resultset of
a query. It won't stop for a full minute if a db connection breaks. It saves
sql querys you wrote Notepad++ style without asking "ARE YOU SURE?".

Its the little things that adds up and make a much better experience when
coming from sqlDeveloper and PgAdmin4.

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zippoxer
TablePlus - Love it! Cross-platform without Electron and yet still pretty.
They got UX right, it's minimal yet powerful enough for me.

~~~
jcoletti
Another vote for TablePlus. Really solid and support for tons of other DBs.
Came from Navicat which crashed a lot. Pricing is way better too. They also
make DBngin, a great free tool for spinning up local DBs in a clean, self-
contained way.

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kmstout
psql. It's installed everywhere I need to use it, it reads from stdin, and it
writes to stdout. It's often the case that I want to take a SQL query that
I've developed, generalize it a bit, and use something like

    
    
      psql OPTIONS <<EOF
      SELECT ...
      EOF
    

in a shell script (probably wrapped in a function for convenience).

~~~
e12e
I do use psql for scripting, but for more interactive use, pgcli is quite nice
too:

[https://www.pgcli.com/](https://www.pgcli.com/)

It doesn't help with visualizing schemas, however.

~~~
iameoghan
Ooh, that looks interesting (even though it doesn't do visual schemas as you
say)

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atonse
I use and love Postico. But I do very basic stuff (SQL, DDL, editing rows,
etc)

~~~
earthboundkid
I have enjoyed using Postico. It’s very easy to use and not ugly, which is
rare in the world of database tooling.

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evo_9
MS added PostgresSQL support to their excellent cross platform dB tool Azure
Data Studio:

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-data-studio-
an-...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-data-studio-an-open-
source-gui-editor-for-postgres/)

~~~
ComputerGuru
(If anyone is wondering: it was forked from VS Code and, yes, it is electron.)

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nsxwolf
I use the database tool built into IntelliJ. It’s amazing. It’s available as a
stand-alone product named DataGrip.

~~~
Doxin
As a pycharm user I can second that the editor integration is _rad_. The
interface itself could use some work in my opinion. The way it deals with
datetime inputs is particularly heinous. But it's definitely the least-bad GUI
database client I've used so far.

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oliwarner
Django.

It's not the answer you _thought_ you were looking for, but it's a bloody good
framework for modelling data, reporting, and also scripting things around it.

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aarpmcgee
Postico seems to be heavily optimized for the 80% of what I need in a postgres
tool. I love it.

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KristiMKE
1\. pgAdmin 2\. DBeaver 3\. Navicat 4\. DataGrip 5\. OmniDB

This article breaks down the pros and cons, features, and pricing for each of
the top PostgreSQL GUI tools: [https://scalegrid.io/blog/which-is-the-best-
postgresql-gui-2...](https://scalegrid.io/blog/which-is-the-best-postgresql-
gui-2019-comparison/)

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nickreese
For visual schema building the best I’ve found is pgmodeler. It is buggy and
isn’t really a client but it is great at modeling, viewing schemas in a model,
and overall making sense of how complex data connects.

Edit: For day-to-day I use Postico but am playing with beekeeper as soon as
JSON and JSONB support are figured out.

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oftenwrong
pgcli [https://www.pgcli.com/](https://www.pgcli.com/)

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pella
For PostGIS / Spatial data

#1. DBeaver: Working with spatial/GIS data

[https://dbeaver.com/docs/wiki/Working-with-Spatial-GIS-
data/](https://dbeaver.com/docs/wiki/Working-with-Spatial-GIS-data/)

#2. pgAdmin4: now offers PostGIS geometry viewer

[https://www.bostongis.com/blog/index.php?/archives/272-pgAdm...](https://www.bostongis.com/blog/index.php?/archives/272-pgAdmin4-now-
offers-PostGIS-geometry-viewer.html)

\---------

Any other?

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rgoulter
I'd guess in your case ("light usage"), just choose one of the open-source GUI
clients would be best. Probably DBeaver.

Here's the decision-tree I'd go with:

Do you want to pay money for it? If not, use a free or open source one.

Are you comfortable with running SQL commands from the command line? If not,
go for a GUI one.

This leaves "OS-specific or cross platform" (which should be straightforward
to resolve), and "desktop client or web interface". I'd expect a desktop
client to be easier to setup.

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alexandernst
Navicat , it has everything I can ask from a RDBMS client (it even supports
NoSQL!), from days transfer, database diffing, scheme reversing, advanced DBA
related tasks...

~~~
tren
I really enjoy using navicat too, it is much more intuitive for me coming from
mssql

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soheilpro
My very own pgcmd [1]. I usually pipe the output to jq [2] or catj [3] for
further processing.

[1] [https://github.com/soheilpro/pgcmd](https://github.com/soheilpro/pgcmd)

[2] [https://stedolan.github.io/jq](https://stedolan.github.io/jq)

[3] [https://github.com/soheilpro/catj](https://github.com/soheilpro/catj)

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wolfgang000
dbeaver It's really good and surprisingly lightweight considering it's java
app.

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rboyd
Most of these comments don't seem to cover what you're asking for, which was
building the schema visually.

SQLEditor
([https://www.malcolmhardie.com/sqleditor/](https://www.malcolmhardie.com/sqleditor/))
is quite good if you're on OS X. It'll generate entire schema or migration
since last save.

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tomashertus
I'm using pgAdmin4 and I'm super happy with that. For the day-to-day tasks
it's a great tool!

~~~
sbuttgereit
I liked that pgAdmin had thorough support for the more obscure PostgreSQL
features (e.g. domains). However, back in the pgAdmin III days I found it
clunky, occasionally unresponsive, and just not fun to work with. With pgAdmin
4... my sense is they doubled down on that with a convoluted architecture
where the "client" is a sort of front end to a web server like process they
spin up.... really I just wanted a desktop client.

Truth is I never found a PostgreSQL graphical tool that I was happy with. The
one with best PostgreSQL support was pgAdmin and the others were all lacking
in that regard. In the end I just bit the bullet and took a week to get psql
into my muscle memory. Best decision ever; in combination with a good .psqlrc
I rarely find myself wanting for anything more. I work with fairly complex
highly normalized schemas (100s of tables) and it tells me what I need to
know. Of course, I'm doing a huge amount of database work so a more casual
database user may not readily be able to get as much mileage out of psql
(graphical data models help for some).

I think OmniDB ([https://omnidb.org/](https://omnidb.org/)) is a tool that
seems to try to cover the same bases as pgAdmin, but doing a better job of it.
I think I'd likely look there if I really needed graphical tool.

For the record, the last graphical tool I used that I was very pleased with
was a tool for Oracle database development PL/SQL Developer
([https://www.allroundautomations.com/products/pl-sql-
develope...](https://www.allroundautomations.com/products/pl-sql-developer)).
For me, it hit a sweet spot that I've just not seen duplicated... but I
stopped working with Oracle over a decade ago and that was when last I used
this tool.

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pvsukale3
PGWeb : [https://github.com/sosedoff/pgweb](https://github.com/sosedoff/pgweb)
Web-based PostgreSQL database browser written in Go.

very lite and minimal.

~~~
iameoghan
Oooh, that's very nice. Deffo adding this to my toolkit.

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yen223
Psql when I want to do anything programmatic

TablePlus when I want to do data exploration.

I've heard good things from colleagues about JetBrain's DataGrip, but I
haven't given it a fair go.

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dataminded
I've been using aquadata for years. It's been a fairly good time.

I have started to transition more of my work to datagrip because I use pycharm
and it's right there.

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sheeshkebab
postico is great

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dahdum
I used Aqua Data Studio for years until they changed to $500/yr license. Tried
using DataGrip but couldn't used to it, now I just use pgAdmin4.

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goldfix
I suggest: [https://www.sql-workbench.eu/](https://www.sql-workbench.eu/)

lightweight and JDBC compatible

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bsg75
DbVisualizer has been my main SQL “IDE” for years.
[https://www.dbvis.com](https://www.dbvis.com)

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nhumrich
Datagrip. I love the tight integration with PyCharm.

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pavelevst
[https://github.com/Paxa/postbird](https://github.com/Paxa/postbird)

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Insanity
PgAdmin but I've not really looked around, it's the one I used when I learned
postgres and stuck with it.

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ahsd1
Valentine studio rocks. Free ver is sufficient.

~~~
iameoghan
Cool, will check this out!

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1ark
Valentina Studio does the job for me.

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brightball
DBeaver

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iamthelord
Can’t live without postico

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alphabettsy
Postico and Pgweb

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turrini
psql and dbeaver

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hexyoungs
pgcli

