7 Best pgAdmin Alternatives in 2026
Last updated 23 August 2026 · By the SaturnSQL team
We build SaturnSQL, one of the tools on this list
So read this with that in mind. We have tried to earn your trust instead of assuming it: every price below was checked against the vendor’s own pricing or project page and is dated, we say plainly where other tools beat us, and where you would be better off with something else we tell you which one.
Nobody leaves pgAdmin over money. It is free, open source, and its Postgres administration coverage is deeper than anything you will pay for on this list. People leave because the query tool is the weakest part of the product, and writing SQL is what they came to do.
So the useful question is not “what replaces pgAdmin” but which half of pgAdmin do you actually use. If it is queries, browsing and exports, everything below is an upgrade and you can uninstall it. If it is roles, tablespaces, vacuum tuning, backup and restore, nothing here is a full substitute and we will say so rather than pretend otherwise.
Pick by what matters to you
- DBeaver, A free pgAdmin replacement that also speaks everything else
- TablePlus, The fastest, most pleasant day-to-day Postgres client
- SaturnSQL, Teams where the Postgres queries matter more than the Postgres administration
- Postico 2, Mac users who want a Postgres-only app that feels like a Mac app
- DataGrip, Writing a lot of Postgres SQL, well
- Beekeeper Studio, A clean open-source desktop client, if your company is small enough
- DbVisualizer, A mature multi-engine client with a real free tier
Feature comparison
| SaturnSQL | pgAdmin | DBeaver | TablePlus | Postico 2 | DataGrip | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browser-based* | ✓ | ~ | — | — | — | — |
| Free tier* | ~ | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | ~ | ~ |
| Self-hostable | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Postgres administration (roles, vacuum, backup) | — | ✓ | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ |
| Shared query library | ✓ Paid | — | — | — | — | — |
| Scheduled queries | ✓ Paid | — | — | — | — | — |
| Export to Google Sheets | ✓ Paid | — | — | — | — | — |
| Send to Slack | ✓ Paid | — | — | — | — | — |
| Schema autocomplete | ✓ | ~ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Runs on macOS / Linux | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | ✓ |
| PostgreSQL | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| MySQL / MariaDB | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| SQL Server | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Redshift | ✓ | ~ | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| ClickHouse | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Licence model | Subscription | Free / OSS | Free / sub | Perpetual | Perpetual | Subscription |
| Starting price | €19/mo | Free | Free | $99 once | $99 once | Free non-comm. |
✓ available · ✓ Paid = not on the free tier · Pro (beta) = Pro plan, limited beta · ~ partial · ? not documented by the vendor · — not available
- Browser-based: pgAdmin runs in a browser, but against a server you host and maintain yourself.
- Free tier: DataGrip is free for non-commercial use only. Postico’s evaluation licence is not for production use. SaturnSQL’s free tier is 1 connection and 1 saved query.
Prices checked 23 August 2026 against each vendor’s own pricing page: SaturnSQL · pgAdmin · DBeaver · TablePlus · Postico 2 · DataGrip.
The 7 best pgAdmin alternatives
DBeaver
Best for: A free pgAdmin replacement that also speaks everything elseDBeaver Community Edition is the default answer: free, open source, a much better query editor than pgAdmin’s, and it connects to every other engine you will eventually be asked about.
Strong
- + Community Edition free and open source, no seat limit
- + Noticeably better SQL editor and result grid than pgAdmin
- + One client for Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle and the rest
Limits
- − Java-based and slow to start
- − Less Postgres-specific administration depth than pgAdmin
- − Desktop only: no shared query library, no scheduled delivery
Pricing: Community Edition free. Lite $113 per year. Enterprise $255 per year. Ultimate $510 per year. CloudBeaver Enterprise, the browser product, $1,025 per year. pricing page, checked 3 August 2026.
TablePlus
Best for: The fastest, most pleasant day-to-day Postgres clientTablePlus is what most people mean when they say they want something nicer than pgAdmin: native, fast, well-designed, $99 perpetual, and it stops being about the tool within a day of installing it.
Strong
- + Genuinely fast and native on macOS, Windows and Linux
- + Perpetual licence from $99, keeps working after the update year
- + Postgres alongside a dozen other engines
Limits
- − Little of pgAdmin’s administrative depth
- − Free tier caps you at 2 open tabs and 2 windows
- − Single seat: no shared query library
Pricing: Basic $99 for one device, Standard $129 for two, Team $79 per seat starting at three seats. All perpetual, each including one year of updates and support. pricing page, checked 8 August 2026.
SaturnSQL
Best for: Teams where the Postgres queries matter more than the Postgres administrationSaturnSQL is a browser-based SQL editor with a shared query library and scheduled delivery to Google Sheets and Slack — it replaces the query tool half of pgAdmin for a team, and none of the administration half.
Strong
- + Browser-based, so teammates get a link rather than an install
- + Shared query library, so a query outlives whoever wrote it
- + Scheduled delivery to Google Sheets and Slack at minute-level precision
- + Postgres alongside MySQL, SQL Server, Redshift, ClickHouse, BigQuery and DynamoDB
Limits
- − No Postgres administration: no roles, tablespaces, vacuum, backup or restore
- − No self-hosting, which is the main reason teams run pgAdmin at all
- − Free tier is a demo: 1 connection, 1 saved query
Pricing: Starter €19 per user per month, including scheduling. Pro €29 is in limited beta. Free tier is 1 connection and 1 saved query with no sharing. pricing page, checked 3 August 2026.
Postico 2
Best for: Mac users who want a Postgres-only app that feels like a Mac appPostico 2 is a native macOS Postgres client that does one engine properly, at $99 per device perpetual — the most Mac-native thing on this list, and useless to you if you are not on a Mac.
Strong
- + Genuinely native macOS design, fast and quiet
- + Perpetual licence, no recurring cost, transferrable within your organisation
- + Focused on Postgres rather than spread across twelve engines
Limits
- − macOS only, and PostgreSQL only
- − The free evaluation licence has no time limit but is not licensed for real use
- − No shared query library, no scheduling
Pricing: Commercial licence $99 / 90€ per device plus VAT, perpetual and transferrable. Team licence $799 / 730€ for up to 10 devices. Personal $69 / 62€ for up to 3 devices, Student $29 / 27€ for 1 device, neither for resale. The evaluation licence has no time limit but is for evaluation only. pricing page, checked 23 August 2026.
DataGrip
Best for: Writing a lot of Postgres SQL, wellDataGrip is JetBrains’ database IDE, and its Postgres completion, refactoring and inspections are far beyond anything pgAdmin’s query tool attempts — free for non-commercial use since October 2025, €259 per user per year otherwise.
Strong
- + The best SQL editing experience of anything on this list
- + Free for non-commercial use since October 2025
- + Version control integration for SQL files
Limits
- − €259 per user per year for commercial use
- − Heavy, and slow to start
- − Single-user IDE: no shared library, no scheduling
Pricing: Free for non-commercial use since October 2025, renewed annually and requiring anonymised usage telemetry. Organisations pay €259 per user per year, with a perpetual fallback licence after 12 months. pricing page, checked 3 August 2026.
Beekeeper Studio
Best for: A clean open-source desktop client, if your company is small enoughBeekeeper Studio is a polished, local-first client with an open source core from $9 per month — but read the Community Edition licence first, because it is intended for organisations under 10 employees and under $1M revenue.
Strong
- + Clean modern interface, local-first, nothing leaves your machine
- + Paid plans include a lifetime access licence for versions released during the subscription
- + Open source core
Limits
- − Community Edition is not intended for most real companies
- − Less Postgres administration depth than pgAdmin
- − No shared library, no scheduled delivery
Pricing: Community Edition free, but intended for students, individuals, non-profits and organisations under 10 employees and/or under $1M annual revenue. Indie $9 per month billed annually ($18 monthly, one device). Professional $14 per month billed annually ($28 monthly, multiple devices). Business $18 per month billed annually ($35 monthly, unlimited devices and seats). pricing page, checked 23 August 2026.
DbVisualizer
Best for: A mature multi-engine client with a real free tierDbVisualizer is a two-decade-old JDBC client with a usable free tier and Pro from $199 per user for the first year, covering Postgres alongside everything else and with better ER diagramming than most.
Strong
- + Free tier with the standard feature set and no time limit
- + Very broad engine support through JDBC
- + Perpetual fallback licence included in the subscription
Limits
- − Java-based desktop app, with the weight that implies
- − No shared query library or team workspace
- − No scheduled delivery to Sheets or Slack
Pricing: Free version with the standard feature set. Pro $199 per user for the first year with standard support, $229 with premium support; renewals $89 and $119 per user per year. Volume and academic discounts available. pricing page, checked 20 August 2026.
The realistic outcome: two tools, not one
Most teams that go looking for a pgAdmin replacement end up keeping pgAdmin. Not as their daily driver — it goes in the drawer with the other administrative tools — but it stays installed, because once a quarter somebody needs to inspect a role grant or kick off a restore. That is a perfectly good outcome, and cheaper than forcing one tool to do both jobs badly. Pick the query client you enjoy, and stop asking it to be an administration console.
If the problem is not the client
There is a second pattern worth naming. Some pgAdmin installs are not really administration tools at all — they are the place one person keeps the twelve queries the rest of the company depends on, run by hand and pasted into a spreadsheet. Swapping pgAdmin for a nicer desktop client does nothing for that, because the problem is not the editor. It is that the queries live on one laptop.
SaturnSQL keeps queries in a shared library the whole team can read, and can run a saved query on a schedule and push the rows into Google Sheets or Slack. It is hosted, so there is no pgAdmin server to maintain — and equally, no self-hosting option if that is a requirement. It does no Postgres administration whatsoever.
How we judged
We ranked on how well each tool covers the two distinct jobs pgAdmin does — writing and running Postgres SQL, and administering a Postgres server — and we scored them separately rather than averaging them into a single misleading verdict. Postico and Beekeeper prices were read from their vendor pages on 23 August 2026, DbVisualizer on 20 August 2026, TablePlus on 8 August 2026, and DBeaver and DataGrip on 3 August 2026, each linked from its entry above. We build SaturnSQL, so treat our verdict on ourselves with appropriate suspicion and check the table. See also our DBeaver alternatives, TablePlus alternatives and DBeaver vs pgAdmin comparisons.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best free pgAdmin alternative?
DBeaver Community Edition. It is free, open source, has a considerably better SQL editor and result grid than pgAdmin’s query tool, and it connects to every other engine you are likely to meet. DbVisualizer’s free tier is a reasonable second if you prefer its ER diagramming. Neither matches pgAdmin for Postgres-specific administration — roles, tablespaces, vacuum, backup and restore — so if that is your daily work, the honest answer is to keep pgAdmin.
Why do people dislike pgAdmin?
Rarely for what it can do. pgAdmin’s administration coverage is genuinely deep and it is free. The complaints are about the experience: the web interface is slow and heavy, the query tool is the weakest part of the product, and the whole thing feels like an administration console that grew a SQL editor rather than a SQL editor that grew administration. If you spend your day writing queries rather than managing the server, you are using the wrong half of it.
Is pgAdmin free?
Yes, entirely. pgAdmin is open source under the PostgreSQL licence with no paid tier, no seat limits and no commercial edition. It runs either as a desktop application or as a web server you host yourself. Cost is not the reason anyone leaves it.
What is the best pgAdmin alternative for macOS?
TablePlus if you want speed and polish across many engines, or Postico 2 if you want a Postgres-only app that feels genuinely native to macOS. Both are $99 perpetual. DBeaver runs on macOS too and is free, at the cost of being a Java application. All three are better daily query environments than pgAdmin; none replaces its administration depth.
Can I replace pgAdmin entirely, or do I need to keep it around?
It depends which pgAdmin you use. If it is queries, browsing tables and exporting results, any client on this list covers you and you can uninstall it. If it is role management, tablespaces, vacuum tuning, backup and restore, keep it — nothing here is a full substitute, and most teams end up running a nice query client daily and opening pgAdmin occasionally for the administrative jobs.
Is there a browser-based alternative to pgAdmin?
Yes, though the two mean different things by "browser-based". pgAdmin runs in a browser against a server you host and maintain. SaturnSQL is hosted, so there is nothing to run: a shared query library, scheduled delivery to Google Sheets and Slack, and Postgres alongside MySQL/MariaDB, SQL Server, Redshift, ClickHouse, BigQuery and DynamoDB. The trade is real — no self-hosting and no Postgres administration at all.
Shared queries and scheduled reports, in the browser, from €19 per user per month.