About SQL Designer

SQL Designer is a free, browser-based visual database designer for MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, SQL Server, and MS Access. It was built to make database schema design faster and more accessible — without installing software, creating an account on a paid platform, or hitting a paywall for SQL export.

Who Built This

Dmitriy Snyatkov

Software developer and the creator of SQL Designer. I've been building web applications for over a 3 years, with a focus on developer tooling and data-heavy systems. I built SQL Designer because I kept running into ERD tools that looked great in screenshots but hit paywalls the moment you tried to export SQL or create a second diagram. SQL Designer began development in 2024 and launched publicly in 2026, and has since been used by developers across the stack — from junior devs sketching their first normalized schema to teams documenting production databases.

GitHub Email

Why SQL Designer Exists

Most ERD tools fall into one of two categories: generic drawing tools (like draw.io or Miro) that produce a picture of a schema but can't validate SQL types or export DDL, and dedicated database design tools that are either paid, require a desktop install, or cap free users at a small number of diagrams.

The frustration that led to building SQL Designer was specific: trying to sketch a normalized schema for a multi-tenant SaaS application and hitting a paywall every time I wanted to export the DDL. The free tier of every dedicated tool I tried — DrawSQL, dbdiagram.io, QuickDBD — had table limits, export limits, or both. draw.io worked but knew nothing about MySQL vs PostgreSQL type differences. I ended up writing the CREATE TABLE statements by hand, which is exactly what a visual tool is supposed to prevent.

SQL Designer sits in a different spot: it understands real database types and constraints, generates valid CREATE TABLE scripts for six dialects, and is genuinely free — no table limits, no diagram limits, no SQL export paywall. The source code is open on GitHub.

What It Does

Visual Schema Design

Drag-and-drop tables, columns with real data types, and foreign key relationships with crow's foot notation.

Six Database Dialects

MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, SQL Server, and MS Access — each with type-specific column pickers.

SQL Export & Import

Export valid CREATE TABLE scripts or import an existing SQL script to generate a visual ER diagram instantly.

Collaboration & Sharing

Real-time multiplayer editing, shareable links with read-only or edit access, and embeddable iframes.

How It Was Built

Development started in 2024. The first working version was a single-page app with a canvas rendered in SVG and SQL output hardcoded for MySQL. Over the following months the rendering layer was rewritten around Vue Flow for proper node-based graph interactions, PostgreSQL was added as a second dialect (which required rethinking the column type system entirely — the two databases share very few type names), and the backend moved to Laravel with a PostgreSQL store for diagrams and user accounts.

The six-dialect SQL export — MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, SQL Server, and MS Access — was the most time-consuming part to get right. Each dialect has different quoting characters, different identity/auto-increment syntax, different constraint placement rules, and different sets of native types. The type picker component adapts to the selected dialect, so a column you define as SERIAL in PostgreSQL mode becomes INT AUTO_INCREMENT in MySQL without you having to remember the difference. The tool launched publicly in early 2026.

Open Source

SQL Designer is open source. The full source code — Laravel backend, Vue 3 frontend, and PostgreSQL schema — is available on GitHub. Issues, pull requests, and feature suggestions are welcome.

Content on This Site

The blog covers database design, ER diagram concepts, SQL reference topics, and comparisons of ERD tools. All articles are written by Dmitriy Snyatkov based on direct experience building and using the tool. Where SQL Designer is compared to alternatives, it is identified explicitly to avoid any conflict-of-interest ambiguity.

Questions or corrections? Email directly or open an issue on GitHub.