Convert PostgreSQL backup to MariaDB

Upload a .backup or .dump file and get back a MariaDB 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 MariaDB

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

Your dataMariaDB type
Whole numberBIGINT
Decimal (money)DECIMAL(10,2)
Floating pointDOUBLE
True / falseTINYINT(1)
DateDATE
Date and timeDATETIME
Short textVARCHAR(255)
Long textLONGTEXT
Binary dataLONGBLOB

Working from a PostgreSQL backup

A PostgreSQL backup is not one thing. pg_dump can write plain SQL, a compressed custom-format archive or a tar archive, and all three routinely end up carrying the same .dump or .backup extension.

  • The first five bytes decide: PGDMP means an archive, which is unpacked with pg_restore, and anything else is treated as plain SQL. The extension is never trusted for this.
  • pg_restore is run with --file=- to print SQL to a pipe, so your backup is converted without ever being restored into a live PostgreSQL server: nothing connects to a database and nothing is created.
  • The directory format, pg_dump -Fd, is a folder rather than a file and cannot be uploaded. Re-dump it as -Fc or as plain SQL.

What MariaDB gets, and how it differs

MariaDB and MySQL are close enough here that one dialect serves both, and picking MariaDB does not select a different code path: the script is byte for byte the one a MySQL conversion produces. The differences worth flagging are in what you do with it.

  • The README packed beside the script names both engines in its load command, because the invocation is the same either way - the file is piped into a client rather than executed by the server.
  • The CREATE DATABASE line in that README asks for utf8mb4_unicode_ci and not for utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci, which is MySQL 8's default. MariaDB has never implemented the 0900 collations, and unicode_ci is the one both engines have.
  • Date-and-time columns are declared DATETIME rather than TIMESTAMP, so what loads is the wall-clock value the source held. No session time zone is applied on the way in, and none is applied when you read it back out.

Reading PostgreSQL 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 MariaDB

  • Tables are created as InnoDB with utf8mb4, so emoji and CJK text survive the load.
  • Backslashes are escaped, because MySQL treats them as escape characters by default.
  • Text columns of unknown length become TEXT rather than a guessed VARCHAR that could truncate your data.
  • Inserts are batched, and identifiers are capped at MySQL’s 64-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 MySQL or MariaDB:

  mysql -u USER -p DATABASE < dump.sql

Create the database first if it does not exist:

  mysql -u USER -p -e "CREATE DATABASE DATABASE CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;"

Questions

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

Convert something else to MariaDB