Microsoft shut down Azure Data Studio on February 28, 2026, and the official migration path points SQL Server users at VS Code plus the MSSQL extension. That works if SQL Server is the only thing you touch. Most teams are not that tidy: the app runs on PostgreSQL, billing still lives on SQL Server because migrating it is nobody's favorite project, and whichever client you standardize on becomes one more thing every new hire has to learn.
So we priced eight options for one concrete team: five developers split across macOS and Windows, with an Amazon RDS PostgreSQL database in us-east-1 on one side and the SQL Server billing database on the other. Every price came from the vendor's own page on October 4, 2026, and year one ranges from $0 to $1,295. This is the short version. The full comparison on DevToolLab has the plan-by-plan detail and the release notes we checked.
Why One Client Has to Cover Several Engines
In the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 21,126 professional developers reported the databases they work with: PostgreSQL 58.2%, MySQL 39.6%, SQLite 36.9%, SQL Server 30.9%, Redis 30.7%, MongoDB 24.3%. Those add up to 221%, which means the typical developer is juggling more than two engines.
That 30.9% on SQL Server is who the Azure Data Studio shutdown hits. For a sense of scale, the MSSQL extension showed 9,821,769 Marketplace installs on October 4, 2026. GitHub stars the same day: DBeaver 51,952, Chat2DB 28,305, Beekeeper Studio 23,700, DbGate 7,335.
The Two-Year Bill for Five Seats
Vendors count differently (per user, per device, subscription, perpetual with paid updates), so the only fair test is to price the same team everywhere. Here is the math, sorted by two-year total instead of sticker price:
const SEATS = 5;
const usd = (n) => `$${n}`.padStart(6);
// [tool, year-one $/seat, year-two $/seat], vendor list prices on October 4, 2026
const plans = [
["DataGrip", 259, 259],
["DbVisualizer Pro", 183, 82],
["Beekeeper Pro", 168, 168],
["DbGate Team", 150, 150],
["DBeaver PRO Lite", 113, 113],
["Chat2DB Local Lite", 99, 0],
["TablePlus Team", 79, 59],
["VS Code + MSSQL", 0, 0],
];
plans
.map(([tool, y1, y2]) => ({ tool, y1: y1 * SEATS, y2: y2 * SEATS }))
.sort((a, b) => b.y1 + b.y2 - (a.y1 + a.y2))
.forEach(({ tool, y1, y2 }) =>
console.log(`${tool.padEnd(20)}${usd(y1)} ${usd(y2)} 2-yr ${usd(y1 + y2)}`)
);
DataGrip $1295 $1295 2-yr $2590
Beekeeper Pro $840 $840 2-yr $1680
DbGate Team $750 $750 2-yr $1500
DbVisualizer Pro $915 $410 2-yr $1325
DBeaver PRO Lite $565 $565 2-yr $1130
TablePlus Team $395 $295 2-yr $690
Chat2DB Local Lite $495 $0 2-yr $495
VS Code + MSSQL $0 $0 2-yr $0
DataGrip tops the list at $2,590 because JetBrains bills organizations $259 per user every year and never discounts the renewal. Year two also means different things: DbVisualizer, TablePlus and Chat2DB keep running after you stop paying (DbVisualizer drops its AI assistant), while DBeaver PRO is subscription-only.
The part the table hides matters more. Three free editions, from DBeaver, Beekeeper Studio and DbGate, already open both PostgreSQL and SQL Server, so a paid row only earns its place if you need something a paid tier adds. What each tier actually unlocks is broken down in the per-vendor pricing section of the original guide.
DBeaver
DBeaver Community is usually the first thing a team installs. It is an Apache 2.0 Java app on Eclipse RCP, and anything with a JDBC driver can plug into it.
For a two-engine team, the free build is enough: PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL, SQLite and more, with data and SQL editors and maintenance tools. It ships often, too: 26.2.1 arrived September 21, 2026, about three weeks after 26.2.0.
The cost is the Eclipse heritage (dense menus, perspectives, a bundled OpenJDK 25 runtime), and the moment you need Redis, MongoDB, Cassandra, ODBC or AI chat, you are buying PRO. Even DBeaver's own site pitches Community at personal projects.
Pricing: Community free · PRO Lite $113/user/year · Enterprise $255 · Ultimate $510.
DataGrip
DataGrip is the JetBrains approach: it introspects your schema, then autocompletes, navigates and refactors SQL the way IntelliJ handles Java.
JetBrains AI Free comes with every license and commercial plans start with a 30-day trial. Pay yearly and you also get a perpetual fallback license, and if the work is non-commercial (learning, hobby projects, open source you do not profit from), it costs nothing. The current release is 2026.2.6, from September 29, 2026. For company work there is no free option, and five seats come to $1,295 a year.
Pricing: Organizations $259/user/year · Individuals $109, falling to $87 and then $65 · free for non-commercial use.
Beekeeper Studio
Beekeeper Studio pairs a GPLv3 Community Edition with paid plans that unlock engines and features. The free build already reaches PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL, SQLite, Redshift, BigQuery and Redis, and gives you SSH tunnels, autocomplete, schema editing and an editable table view. Paying buys a lifetime usage license: you keep every version released during the months you paid for. The project moves quickly, with v6.1.4 and v6.1.5 landing three days apart, the latter on October 2, 2026.
Behind the paywall: editing query results in place, import, export and backup, plus Oracle, MongoDB, DuckDB and ClickHouse. The AI Shell needs Professional, and the Indie plan runs on a single device.
Pricing: Community free · Indie $9/user/month billed yearly · Professional $14 · Business $18.
TablePlus
TablePlus is closed source, with native apps for macOS, Windows, Linux and iOS, and it sells one-time licenses.
Two features stand out: a code review pane that shows every staged change before it is committed, and a safe mode for production connections. Each purchase covers twelve months of updates, after which the app keeps running on the last version you got; extending updates costs $59 per device.
The catches: what TablePlus calls the free version is really a trial, capped at two tabs, two windows and two advanced filters open at once. Licensing is per device, so a work laptop and a home desktop eat two seats. And because it is closed, nobody on your team can audit the code.
Pricing: Basic $99 one-time per device · Team $79/seat with a three-seat minimum · update renewal $59/device.
DbGate
DbGate builds its desktop and web versions from one GPL-3.0 codebase, so you can host a single instance behind a URL rather than putting it on each developer's machine. Community handles SQL engines, MongoDB and Redis, and 7.2.6 (September 1, 2026) moved SQL Server backup and restore into the free edition. Premium gets you charts, AI chat, a visual query designer, and schema and data compare; Team Premium adds user, connection and role management backed by external identity providers.
The tradeoffs: at 7,335 GitHub stars it has the smallest community of the eight, its strongest features are Premium-only, and the team plan needs at least two users.
Pricing: Community free · Premium $120/year for one user · Team Premium $150/user/year.
DbVisualizer
DbVisualizer has been sold commercially for years on Windows, macOS and Linux, and its Pro license keeps working after the term, minus the AI assistant. First-year Pro is $199 per user for one to three users or $183 for four to ten, with update renewals at $89 or $82. Startups get half off for up to ten users. The September 15, 2026 release, 26.2.3, was about SSH: you can now replace a host key that changed and get a dropped SSH session back.
Licensing is per user and the code is closed, but the free edition can be used at work, and Pro features have a 21-day trial.
Pricing: Free edition · Pro $199/user first year then $89 (1-3 users), or $183 then $82 (4-10 users).
VS Code and the MSSQL Extension
The MSSQL extension is where Microsoft sends Azure Data Studio users. It is free and MIT-licensed, runs on Windows 11, macOS and Linux, and targets SQL Server, Azure SQL and Fabric's SQL Database. You get query execution, schema management and GitHub Copilot assistance, and if your fingers still expect SSMS, a keymap extension restores shortcuts such as F5 to run a query.
For Postgres you install a second Microsoft extension (749,916 installs, v1.31.2 on October 1, 2026), so a mixed team ends up with two extensions, each with its own connection list. Ratings are lukewarm: 3.16 out of 5 from 210 reviews. Microsoft also keeps Agent jobs and server administration in SSMS 22 (22.10.2, September 28, 2026), which is Windows 11 and Windows Server only.
Pricing: free. MIT license, v1.46.0 from September 28, 2026.
Chat2DB
Chat2DB is built around AI: describe the query in English and it writes SQL against your schema. Its GitHub repo lists more than 40 supported databases, and the client runs as a desktop app, in a browser, in Docker or from a CLI, with MCP support and room for your own model. You pay once per user for the Local plans and can activate them offline. Releases are frequent: v5.3.7 on September 22, 2026, then a 5.4.0 beta the next day.
Read the license before rolling it out. Starting with 5.3.0, Community ships under a modified Apache 2.0 license: use it yourself or inside your company freely, but running it as a service, embedding it or redistributing binaries takes written permission. Call it source-available rather than open source. Two more items for a procurement checklist: activating offline switches the AI off, and the chat2db.ai footer shows a Zhejiang ICP registration number, the kind of detail a US vendor-security questionnaire will flag.
Pricing: Local Lite $99/user one-time · Local Max $199 · Local Ultra $399.
The Eight at a Glance
| Tool | Free tier usable at work | 5 seats, year 1 | License | Both engines in one app | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DBeaver | Yes, Community | $565 | Apache 2.0 | Yes | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| DataGrip | No | $1,295 | Proprietary | Yes | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| Beekeeper Studio | Yes, Community | $840 | GPLv3 | Yes | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| TablePlus | Trial only | $395, one-time | Proprietary | Yes | macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS |
| DbGate | Yes, Community | $750 | GPL-3.0 | Yes | Windows, macOS, Linux, browser |
| DbVisualizer | Yes, Free edition | $915 | Proprietary | Yes | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| VS Code + MSSQL | Yes | $0 | MIT | No, needs 2 extensions | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| Chat2DB | Internal use only | $495, one-time | Modified Apache 2.0 | Yes | Windows, macOS, Linux, browser |
Picking One Without Switching Twice
- Pull the engine list from your saved connections, not from memory. SQL Server and nothing else points at the free MSSQL extension; anything alongside it (Postgres, MongoDB, Redis) points at a multi-engine client.
- Hold each free tier up to that list. DBeaver's free build has no MongoDB or Redis, Beekeeper's skips Oracle and MongoDB, and DbGate's includes both MongoDB and Redis.
- Read the license terms. DataGrip's free license rules out commercial work, and Chat2DB requires written permission before you distribute it to clients.
- Price two years with your own seat count. Stop paying and TablePlus, Chat2DB Local and DbVisualizer keep working (DbVisualizer minus AI), DataGrip and Beekeeper fall back to an older version, and DBeaver PRO stops.
- Run your worst production query through each finalist during the trial: 30 days for DataGrip and DbGate, 21 for DbVisualizer, 14 for Beekeeper.
What We Would Pick
- Leaving Azure Data Studio, SQL Server only: the MSSQL extension in VS Code with the SSMS keymap installed, and SSMS 22 on the Windows machines for admin tasks.
- PostgreSQL plus SQL Server, zero budget: DBeaver Community for engine coverage, or Beekeeper Studio Community if a cleaner UI beats NoSQL support.
- Already on JetBrains: DataGrip, which the All Products Pack includes. Nothing else here is a full IDE.
- Mac-heavy team that hates subscriptions: TablePlus Team, five seats for a single $395 payment.
- One browser-based client for everyone: DbGate, either Community self-hosted or Team Premium.
Wrapping Up
Azure Data Studio going away forced SQL Server teams to choose this year. It did not change which clients are good. For a PostgreSQL plus SQL Server team, three free editions already cover the work, and paid plans buy NoSQL support, AI features and polish. The useful question before paying for a single seat: is there an engine on your list that the free edition will not open? If not, take a $0 row.
If you only need to inspect a .db file pulled from a mobile build, the browser-based SQLite Viewer handles it without installing anything, and SQL Formatter cleans up queries exported from Azure Data Studio. The original guide on DevToolLab also links follow-up reading on database migration tools and serverless Postgres.
Top comments (0)