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SPECIFICTION
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dbmate vs sqldef

dbmate

github.com

sqldef

sqldef.github.io

Side by side

Figuredbmatesqldef
Price fromFree—
Free planYes—
Free trial——
Open source——
Web—Yes
WindowsYesYes
macOSYesYes
LinuxYesYes
Self-hostedYesYes
Plans published10
Spec score · Database Migration Tools8.6 (#3)7.2 (#26)
DistributionThe README documents installation through NPM, Homebrew, Scoop, a Linux binary, and Docker images published to GitHub Container Registry.The project provides pre-built single-binary executables and Docker images.
LicenseThe repository includes an MIT license.The sqldef source files are distributed under the MIT License, while the parser is distributed under Apache License 2.0.
PurposeDbmate is a database migration tool that keeps database schemas in sync across developers and production servers.sqldef is a CLI tool for diffing SQL schemas and managing RDBMS migrations with regular SQL DDLs.
SupportThe repository README links to a discussion of alternatives and a contribution guide, but the opened page does not specify a support service or response time.The project invites feature requests through pull requests or GitHub Discussions.

Plans

dbmate

  • dbmateFree

dbmate pricing →

sqldef

No plans published.

sqldef pricing →

In their own words

dbmate

dbmate is a free, open-source command-line tool for keeping database schemas in sync across developers and production servers. It works independently of application language and can be used with Go, Node.js, Python, Ruby, PHP, Rust, C++, and other languages or frameworks. Migrations are plain SQL in timestamp-versioned files. Commands create, apply, and roll back migrations, check status, dump or load a schema, and wait for a database server. The project lists MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and ClickHouse, and documents BigQuery connections and Spanner support for databases using the PostgreSQL dialect. Migrations run atomically in a transaction by default when the database supports transactions, though individual migration blocks can opt out. dbmate can maintain a schema.sql dump for source-control review and Git diffs; creating dumps relies on database client tools such as pg_dump, mysqldump, or sqlite3. It reads DATABASE_URL by default and can load environment variables from a .env file. Installation options include NPM, Homebrew, Scoop, a Linux binary, and Docker images. Go applications can use it as a library, and Go embed can package migrations into an application binary.

Visit github.com

sqldef

sqldef has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.

Visit sqldef.github.io