Convert DB file to Postgres

Upload a .sqlite or .db or .sqlite3 file and get back a Postgres SQL script you can load straight into your database. Types are preserved rather than flattened to text. Free, no registration, up to 10MB.

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CSV, Excel, SQLite, SQL, DBF (max 10 MB)

How your data is typed in Postgres

Generated from the converter's own Postgres type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.

Your dataPostgres type
Whole numberBIGINT
Decimal (money)NUMERIC(10,2)
Floating pointDOUBLE PRECISION
True / falseBOOLEAN
DateDATE
Date and timeTIMESTAMP
Short textTEXT
Long textTEXT
Binary dataBYTEA

Working from a .db file

A .db extension is a habit rather than a format. SQLite uses it, but so do Berkeley DB, thumbnail caches and any desktop application that wanted a generic name, so the first question is what is actually inside yours.

  • A .db is routed to the SQLite reader on its extension alone, so one that is not a SQLite database fails to open rather than converting into something wrong.
  • You can check first: a SQLite file begins with the text "SQLite format 3" in its first 16 bytes, which head -c 16 yourfile.db will show you.
  • DuckDB databases are often saved as .db too, and that one will not open here - rename it to .duckdb or .ddb so it reaches the DuckDB reader instead.

The oldest PostgreSQL this loads into

Postgres is the informal spelling and the one most people type. Since the name says nothing about a version, the useful question for this page is which server releases the generated script runs on, and that is decided by the newest piece of syntax in it.

  • The identity clause on auto-increment columns is the newest thing in the file, and it arrived in release 10. That is the floor for loading the script unedited.
  • Everything else is far older: the hex escape the script uses for binary values has been accepted since 9.0, and jsonb, which is what a JSON column is declared as, since 9.4.
  • On a server below the floor the script still loads if you delete the identity clauses by hand. The columns keep every value they were given, because each INSERT names them explicitly; they simply stop assigning new ones.

Reading DB file

  • Declared types, primary keys, NOT NULL constraints and blobs all carry through.
  • SQLite reports INTEGER PRIMARY KEY as nullable because it aliases the rowid; the conversion corrects that.
  • SQLite type affinity is loose, so a NUMERIC column with no declared scale is given room for decimals rather than being rounded to whole numbers.

Writing Postgres

  • Backslashes are left alone, because PostgreSQL treats them as ordinary characters — doubling them would corrupt every Windows path.
  • Auto-increment columns become GENERATED BY DEFAULT AS IDENTITY.
  • Binary data is written as bytea, and identifiers respect the 63-character limit.

What you get

A ZIP containing dump.sql, plus a README with the exact command to load it. If anything about your data needed a judgement call, a _warnings.txt explains it.

Load this dump into PostgreSQL:

  psql -U USER -d DATABASE -f dump.sql

Create the database first if it does not exist:

  createdb -U USER DATABASE

Questions

Is converting DB file to Postgres free?
Yes. Files up to 10MB convert free with no account. There is a limit of five conversions per day per IP address.
Will my DB file data keep its types in Postgres?
Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real Postgres types rather than everything becoming text. The mapping table above shows exactly what you get.
Do you store my file?
No. The file is written to a temporary directory, converted, and the directory is deleted as soon as your download has been sent.

This conversion, under other names

Convert DB file to something else

Convert something else to Postgres