Convert pg_dump to Postgres

Upload a .backup or .dump 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 pg_dump file

pg_dump has enough flags to change what its output even contains, and a few of them decide whether the file in front of you is convertible at all. These are the ones that matter here.

  • pg_dump -Fc and a plain pg_dump > file.sql both work, and so does --inserts or --column-inserts, though neither is necessary: the default COPY output is read too.
  • --schema-only gives you the tables with no rows in them. That is a valid conversion, and almost never the one that was wanted.
  • --data-only is the opposite problem: rows arrive with no CREATE TABLE to name their columns, and the conversion says so rather than inventing names for them.
  • Ownership and privilege statements are dropped while the archive is unpacked, so a dump taken as one role converts without that role having to exist anywhere.

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 pg_dump

  • Reads pg_dump custom-format archives (.backup, .dump) — pgAdmin's default backup option — as well as plain SQL dumps.
  • Data written as COPY blocks is read, not just INSERT statements. COPY is pg_dump's default, so a reader that only understands INSERT returns your tables with none of their rows.
  • Primary keys declared by a later ALTER TABLE, which is how pg_dump writes them, are preserved.

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 pg_dump 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 pg_dump 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

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