Natural Language SQL vs Outerbase AI

Natural Language SQL turns plain-English questions about databases into SQL, validates and runs the query, then streams back results. It connects to PostgreSQL and MySQL, including multiple databases of the same type in parallel. Hybrid retrieval combines BM25 and sentence-transformer vectors to select schema context for a question. Users can review and edit generated SQL before execution, while the interface shows progress through query stages. Results can be sorted, paginated at 50 rows per page, downloaded as CSV or JSON, or copied as tab-separated text. SELECT queries receive a default limit, explicit result counts are capped at 1,000 rows, and execution times out after 30 seconds by default. INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE are allowed by default, with warning banners; the project recommends a read-only database user to block writes. Ollama runs locally by default, keeping questions, schema and generated SQL on the user’s machine. OpenAI, Gemini and Groq are optional cloud providers and receive the question, relevant schema portion and SQL context. The project is free under GPL-3.0. Its recommended Docker setup needs Docker 20.10 or later with Compose v2 and about 10 GB of free disk space.

Outerbase AI is a database platform with EZQL, an assistant that turns natural-language requests into queries, charts, and dashboards. It uses the database schema as context, and its AI query editor can generate queries, repair broken ones, and optimize results. Charts can be created from datasets or within AI conversations. Connections include Postgres, MySQL, SQLite, MongoDB, ClickHouse, Microsoft SQL Server, Snowflake, Google BigQuery, and Amazon Redshift; listed provider integrations include DigitalOcean, Neon, Turso, and Cloudflare. Security features include two-factor authentication, database-role access, encryption, SSH tunneling, and private AI models not trained on customer data. Customer data stays in the customer’s database, while Outerbase stores an encrypted schema version. The free plan is free and includes up to 5 users, 1 base, 10 EZQL queries monthly, 3 saved queries, and 1 dashboard, for transactional databases only. Hobby is $9 a month and Pro is $30 a month, per user and billed annually. Desktop apps support Mac devices with M1 or newer chips and modern Windows devices. Self-hosting is available only to Enterprise customers.