Alembic

Spec sheet

What it does

Alembic is a lightweight database migration tool for use with SQLAlchemy and provides tools to create, manage, and invoke relational database change scripts.Read 3 Oct 2026 · alembic.sqlalchemy.org

Support

The project directs users to GitHub Discussions for bug and feature discussion and its GitHub issue tracker for bug reports and feature requests.Read 3 Oct 2026 · alembic.sqlalchemy.org

License

The repository license grants permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell the software, subject to its stated conditions.Read 3 Oct 2026 · github.com

Autogenerate

Alembic compares database schema with application metadata to generate candidate migration scripts that users review and edit by hand.Read 3 Oct 2026 · alembic.sqlalchemy.org

Autogenerate limitation

Autogenerate does not reliably identify table or column renames and its candidate migrations must be manually reviewed and corrected.Read 3 Oct 2026 · alembic.sqlalchemy.org

Database ecosystem

Alembic uses SQLAlchemy and database drivers, and its documentation describes PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, and Microsoft SQL Server dialect implementations.Read 3 Oct 2026 · alembic.sqlalchemy.org

Installation

Alembic can be installed with pip and is commonly installed in a project-local Python virtual environment.Read 3 Oct 2026 · alembic.sqlalchemy.org

Maintainer

Alembic is developed by Mike Bayer and is part of the SQLAlchemy project.Read 3 Oct 2026 · alembic.sqlalchemy.org

Migration scripts

A project's migration environment is created once and maintained with its source code.Read 3 Oct 2026 · alembic.sqlalchemy.org

Offline limitation

Migration scripts that need client/server database access, such as pulling rows with SELECT, will not work in offline SQL generation mode.Read 3 Oct 2026 · alembic.sqlalchemy.org

Offline SQL

Alembic can generate SQL scripts for migrations instead of running them against a database, including for workflows where DDL access is restricted.Read 3 Oct 2026 · alembic.sqlalchemy.org

Python support

Alembic supports Python 3.10 and newer and requires SQLAlchemy 2.0.0 or newer.Read 3 Oct 2026 · alembic.sqlalchemy.org

SQLite migrations

Batch operations support SQLite's limited ALTER TABLE capabilities by copying data into a newly structured table and replacing the old table.Read 3 Oct 2026 · alembic.sqlalchemy.org

Plans and prices

Every Alembic plan and price →

Where Specifiction places it

• Database Migration Tools#12 of 327.9