Convert PostgreSQL backup to SQL Server
Upload a .backup or .dump file and get back a 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.
Click to upload or drag and drop
CSV, Excel, SQLite, SQL, DBF (max 10 MB)
How your data is typed in SQL Server
Generated from the converter's own SQL Server type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.
| Your data | 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 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.
How names and bytes are written
mssql is the short name the drivers use - the ODBC DSN, SQLAlchemy's mssql+pyodbc, the container image. What it produces is ordinary T-SQL text, and the details worth checking before you run it are how it writes names and how it writes raw bytes.
- →Identifiers are wrapped in square brackets rather than double quotes, and a bracket inside a source name is turned into an underscore before the wrapping goes on: a column named Order]Date is created as [Order_Date], so a bracket in your data can never close a name early.
- →The identifier cap is 128 characters, high enough that almost every source name survives untouched - one that Oracle would have to cut at 30 arrives here whole.
- →Binary columns are VARBINARY(MAX) and their values are written as bare 0x hex literals, with no quotes around them and no conversion function wrapped over them.
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 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 PostgreSQL backup to 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 PostgreSQL backup data keep its types in SQL Server?
- Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real 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.