Convert DuckDB to PostgreSQL

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

Click to upload or drag and drop

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

How your data is typed in PostgreSQL

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

Your dataPostgreSQL 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 .duckdb file

DuckDB keeps an entire analytical database in one file, with real types behind it - decimals that are decimals, and integers wide enough to be worth checking before you move them somewhere narrower.

  • Only the main schema is read. Tables created in another schema, or in a second database attached at query time, are not part of the conversion.
  • Views in main are read as though they were tables, so a view's rows are materialised into the target rather than skipped.
  • HUGEINT is the one type with nowhere to go: no target here has a 128-bit integer, so those columns are carried across as text rather than silently truncated.
  • A DuckDB process that was killed leaves a .duckdb.wal sidecar holding everything it had not checkpointed yet. Upload the database on its own and it opens with no error and no tables at all - send the .wal file alongside it, or checkpoint before you copy the database out.

What the PostgreSQL script contains

The conversion produces one dump.sql with a README beside it, zipped. It is a script you can open, grep and edit before you run it rather than an archive a tool has to unpack, and it is deliberately sparing in what it declares.

  • Every string column is declared TEXT, whatever length the source declared for it. PostgreSQL stores a short value in a TEXT column exactly as cheaply as in a VARCHAR, and an unbounded column cannot reject a row on load for being a few characters too long.
  • Identifiers are all double-quoted, and even so a name on PostgreSQL's reserved list is given a trailing underscore: a column called user arrives as user_, order as order_, limit as limit_.
  • A decimal column whose source declared no scale is given six decimal places rather than none, keeping whatever precision it did declare: NUMERIC(10,6) from a source that said 10, and NUMERIC(18,6) from one that declared neither. A scale of zero would have the server round 19.99 to 20 as it loaded.

Reading DuckDB

  • Types, primary keys and NOT NULL constraints are read from the database.
  • The file is opened read-only, so your upload is never modified or upgraded in place.

Writing PostgreSQL

  • 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 DuckDB to PostgreSQL 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 DuckDB data keep its types in PostgreSQL?
Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real PostgreSQL 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 DuckDB to something else

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