Convert pgAdmin backup to DuckDB
Upload a .backup or .dump file and get back a DuckDB file. 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 DuckDB
Generated from the converter's own DuckDB type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.
| Your data | DuckDB type |
|---|---|
| Whole number | BIGINT |
| Decimal (money) | DECIMAL(10,2) |
| Floating point | DOUBLE |
| True / false | BOOLEAN |
| Date | DATE |
| Date and time | TIMESTAMP |
| Short text | VARCHAR |
| Long text | VARCHAR |
| Binary data | BLOB |
Working from a pgAdmin backup
pgAdmin's Backup dialog is a front end to pg_dump, so what you end up with depends on which format you picked in it - and the default is not plain SQL, which surprises people expecting a file they can read.
- →In pgAdmin's server and container modes the backup is written on the machine running pgAdmin rather than on yours, under that installation's storage directory for your login. Fetch it with pgAdmin's own file manager before you can upload it anywhere.
- →If the dialog refused to produce a file at all and complained that a utility was not found, that is its Binary Path preference pointing at no pg_dump. It is a pgAdmin setting, not a problem with your database.
- →The dialog's "Do not save Owner" and "Do not save Privileges" toggles make no difference to the result: those statements are stripped when the archive is unpacked, whichever way you set them.
Decimals and text in the .duckdb file
DuckDB takes the source's declared types more nearly unchanged than any other target here, which makes the two places where it cannot the things worth reading: the width of a decimal, and the length of a string.
- →DECIMAL tops out at 38 digits, so a wider source column is clamped rather than refused: an Oracle NUMBER(50,10) is created here as DECIMAL(38,10), and the scale is never allowed to grow past the precision holding it.
- →A decimal that declared no scale gets six places for its fraction rather than none, inside that same rule: a source precision of 10 becomes DECIMAL(10,6), one of 5 becomes DECIMAL(5,5), and one that declared no precision either becomes DECIMAL(18,6).
- →Strings become VARCHAR with no length attached to them. DuckDB's VARCHAR is unbounded, so no column has to be sized in advance and no row can be turned away for being longer than the column it goes in.
Reading pgAdmin backup
- →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 DuckDB
- →A real .duckdb file, not a script — open it straight away with the DuckDB CLI.
- →DuckDB has genuine DECIMAL and BOOLEAN types, so nothing is flattened on the way in.
What you get
A ZIP containing database.duckdb. If anything about your data needed a judgement call, a _warnings.txt explains it.
Questions
- Is converting pgAdmin backup to DuckDB 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 pgAdmin backup data keep its types in DuckDB?
- Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real DuckDB 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.