Convert SQLite to PostgreSQL
Upload a .sqlite or .db or .sqlite3 file and get back a PostgreSQL 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 PostgreSQL
Generated from the converter's own PostgreSQL type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.
| Your data | PostgreSQL type |
|---|---|
| Whole number | BIGINT |
| Decimal (money) | NUMERIC(10,2) |
| Floating point | DOUBLE PRECISION |
| True / false | BOOLEAN |
| Date | DATE |
| Date and time | TIMESTAMP |
| Short text | TEXT |
| Long text | TEXT |
| Binary data | BYTEA |
Working from a .sqlite file
SQLite is a complete relational database in a single file, which makes it both the easiest source to read and the one people most often need to get out of: the tables, names and constraints are already there to be carried over.
- →The database is opened read-only through a file: URI, so the file you uploaded is never written to, not even to tidy up after itself.
- →SQLite's own bookkeeping tables - anything named sqlite_%, such as sqlite_sequence - are left out. Every other table is converted, in alphabetical order.
- →Declared types are matched the way SQLite matches them, by substring, so VARCHAR(20), NVARCHAR and CHARACTER all land as text columns.
What the PostgreSQL script contains
The conversion produces one dump.sql with a README beside it, zipped. It is a script you can open, grep and edit before you run it rather than an archive a tool has to unpack, and it is deliberately sparing in what it declares.
- →Every string column is declared TEXT, whatever length the source declared for it. PostgreSQL stores a short value in a TEXT column exactly as cheaply as in a VARCHAR, and an unbounded column cannot reject a row on load for being a few characters too long.
- →Identifiers are all double-quoted, and even so a name on PostgreSQL's reserved list is given a trailing underscore: a column called user arrives as user_, order as order_, limit as limit_.
- →A decimal column whose source declared no scale is given six decimal places rather than none, keeping whatever precision it did declare: NUMERIC(10,6) from a source that said 10, and NUMERIC(18,6) from one that declared neither. A scale of zero would have the server round 19.99 to 20 as it loaded.
Reading SQLite
- →Declared types, primary keys, NOT NULL constraints and blobs all carry through.
- →SQLite reports INTEGER PRIMARY KEY as nullable because it aliases the rowid; the conversion corrects that.
- →SQLite type affinity is loose, so a NUMERIC column with no declared scale is given room for decimals rather than being rounded to whole numbers.
Writing PostgreSQL
- →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 SQLite to PostgreSQL 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 SQLite data keep its types in PostgreSQL?
- Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real PostgreSQL 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.