Been using this for a year or so as my daily basic DB client. Really like it for what it is and can definitely recommend it for quick and simple DB operations.
I put it in the same category as tableplus - its a nice simple db client when all you need to do is browse some data, edit a row or two, etc. The community edition of beekeeper, however, has less annoyances than tableplus's free version imo.
For more advanced use-cases, it doesn't come close to dbeaver or tools like that, but it also isn't designed to imo.
Looking forward to an (admittedly big and clunky) PR of mine to beekeeper potentially being merged that adds support for connecting to aws rds instances via iam (cli) :)
I’ve literally just started using TablePlus as I get it as part of SetApp so this is a really handy comparison. I was tempted to give this a try but sounds like I’m getting something very similar with TablePlus for money I’m already spending each month.
BeeKeeper looks very nice from what I can see though so might still try it.
I made Beekeeper Studio because the lack of a good SQL editor on Linux drove me crazy. TablePlus is great on MacOS, but when I started it didn't even have a Linux version.
I have full feature parity across all OSes, which I'm pretty proud of as a one-man team (although I do have some AMAZING part time help)
Biggest issues for me: Subscription based payments and (biggest issue) missing option to adjust the keyboard shortuts. So I have to adjust my workflow and muscle memory to the tool instead of the other way around.
For the rest it is a very nice looking client with a good amount of features (for my use case) and hats off to the developers.
In case the developers are watching, I love beekeeper and use the free version daily. If you sold a one-time license, even if it was just for the current major version, I’d gladly pay $100 for that.
Almost all Electron-based software has a guilt of shortcuts. By either not having them at all, or by using the scheme alien to a particular OS. Obsidian is my personal pit peeve - it still has a spotty support of F2 (rename) shortcut on Windows. Previously, it hadn't it at all.
Some sort of keyboard shortcut settings screen is my todo list. Honestly it's a total PITA because different libraries handle shortcuts in different places, so I've been putting it off.
My focus after 4.0 is tidying up this type of stuff :-).
It's a similar value proposition as VSCode/Sublime Text vs IntelliJ. If you are in a database all day and need a big beefy IDE, Beekeeper Studio isn't for you.
I built Beekeeper Studio because I wanted an easy to use and intuitive GUI. I'm not a DBA, so using DBeaver or DataGrip required me to basically re-learn the whole app every time I used it, which I didn't have the patience for.
DBeaver has the same open source 'community' version model.
Beekeeper seems like a less clunky, but also much less featureful alternative. I mean that in a good way really, I quite like the idea of 'slightly more than psql' (but not too much), as long as it's fast/lightweight.
DataGrip is heavy. It takes seconds to launch and while it must be quite feature complete, the interface is cluttered.
Currently using TablePlus and while I have a few problems with it, it's snappy and mostly fine. Tried Beekeeper some years ago but might as well try again.
It wasn't obvious to me what this software was when posted. The original HN title was "Beekeeper Studio 4.0 - Import. backup, restore, and bigquery" which implies it's a backup solution for bigquery. The HN title was edited to include "SQL editor" after my comment. Do you see anywhere in the linked release notes where it explains what Beekeeper Studio is? I discovered it's more than a SQL backup and restore solution and I figured others would want to know instead of making everyone click a bunch.
I've been using this on Macs as my DB manager on a new project (MariaDB at the moment) and have been pretty happy with it.
I use SQL Editor to do the design and to generate DB-creation scripts, and once the DB is up and running I maintain it with Beekeeper while I code in my IDEs.
Since you mentioned it, I was always curious if the team behind TablePlus were/are connected to the team behind Postico [1]. The UIs for both (at least before Postico 2) are almost identical.
It'd been several years, but taking another look now I can spot the differences.
I suppose the tooling for databases (or the expectation from users) means they all end up sharing a similar UI and where and how various features are implemented. Not too unlike word processors or spreadsheet software!
They came first, I wouldn't say I copied them, but we both value good UX and app design. I actually copied an old Mac app called SequelPro, which I missed greatly when moving to PSQL and a Linux desktop OS :-).
When I started building Beekeeper there were 0 open source DB apps with good UX, especially on Linux. So that's why it exists.
I now have a paid version to support development as it has grown super quickly over the last 3 years.
Migrated to Pop OS and one of the first suggestions for a DB manager in the Pop Shop was Beekeeper. I tested it out since I'd only used DBeaver before. Upon finding out it didn't save my connection by default, I instantly went back to DBeaver.
Can you ping me to explain 'not saving your connection by default'? That sounds like a bug or a bad UX decision as it does save in recent connections, even if you don't explicitly save it.
Smoother to use and simpler, but it's missing features when it comes to running long queries where you want to break it up into several so it does not timeout.
I have a 40% off sale right now, which means its $51 for a year, if you cancel right away you still get lifetime access and 1 year of software updates.
I think that's a pretty fair price, but always happy to get more pricing feedback.
