Is converting pg_dump to Microsoft SQL Server 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 Microsoft SQL Server?

Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real Microsoft SQL Server 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.

Convert pg_dump to Microsoft SQL Server

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

1Upload your file

Click to upload or drag and drop

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

2Choose target format

How your data is typed in Microsoft SQL Server

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

Your data	Microsoft SQL Server type
Whole number	BIGINT
Decimal (money)	DECIMAL(10,2)
Floating point	FLOAT
True / false	BIT
Date	DATE
Date and time	DATETIME2
Short text	NVARCHAR(255)
Long text	NVARCHAR(MAX)
Binary data	VARBINARY(MAX)

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.

Which SQL Server this runs on

Microsoft SQL Server is the full product name, and it covers a wide range of places to put a database: Express on a laptop, a Developer instance, a Linux container, a managed Azure SQL database. The script was written not to care which of them it lands in.

→There is no CREATE DATABASE, no USE, and no filegroup or collation clause anywhere in the file, so nothing in it can be refused by an edition that forbids those. Which database it populates is decided by your client's connection.
→No schema is named either, so the tables land in the default schema of whichever login runs the script - dbo for most logins. Moving them elsewhere afterwards is an ALTER SCHEMA ... TRANSFER.
→The primary key is emitted as an unnamed constraint, which the server materialises as a clustered index under a name it invents. Nothing else is indexed, so any index the source carried has to be rebuilt by hand.

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 Microsoft SQL Server

→String literals carry the N prefix, so non-ASCII text survives whatever collation the database uses.
→Timestamps become DATETIME2. T-SQL’s TIMESTAMP is a row-version counter, not a point in time.
→Identity columns are wrapped in SET IDENTITY_INSERT so explicit key values load.
→Statements are separated with GO in batches.

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 SQL Server:

  sqlcmd -S HOST -U USER -P PASSWORD -d DATABASE -i dump.sql

Notes:

  - Text columns are NVARCHAR and literals carry the N prefix, so
    non-ASCII data survives regardless of database collation.
  - Timestamps are DATETIME2. T-SQL's TIMESTAMP type is a row
    version, not a point in time.

Questions

Is converting pg_dump to Microsoft SQL Server 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 Microsoft SQL Server?: Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real Microsoft SQL Server 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.