Seaquel
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Seaquel vs TablePlus

A sourced comparison of Seaquel and TablePlus: pricing, supported engines, Linux release cadence, and the things TablePlus does better.

Choose Seaquel if

  • You work mainly on Linux or Windows and want the same build, on the same release schedule, as everyone else on your team.
  • You want the source to be inspectable — Seaquel is MIT licensed.
  • You want visual tooling built in: query plans, an ERD viewer, dashboards and a workflow canvas.
  • You want to share saved queries and dashboards through Git rather than a proprietary sync.

Choose TablePlus if

  • You need MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis, Snowflake or BigQuery. Seaquel doesn't support any of them.
  • You want a companion iOS client — TablePlus bundles one with the license.
  • You want to extend the client yourself through a documented JavaScript plugin API.
  • You prefer paying once. TablePlus is a perpetual license; Seaquel's commercial license is annual.
  • You're on macOS and want the longest track record — TablePlus has shipped since 2017.
At a glance
Seaquel
TablePlus
Free tier
Free for personal use
Permanent free tier, limited to 2 open tabs, 2 windows and 2 advanced filters
Paid
Annual Individual or Business license
$99 (1 device) to $129 (2 devices), paid once, including one year of updates
License
MIT
Proprietary, closed source
Engines
6
~15
Linux
Full
Trails the flagship build

TablePlus is a good app. I’d rather say that up front than bury it, because most “vs TablePlus” pages are written by people who need you to believe otherwise.

One thing to clear up first: you’ll still find comparisons claiming the Linux build is in alpha. That was true once. TablePlus marked it stable in November 2023.

The Linux and Windows story

If you’re on macOS, TablePlus is a native app with fifteen engines and nine years of polish behind it. If your databases include MongoDB or Redis, it’s almost certainly the right choice and nothing further down changes that.

Linux is where it gets complicated. TablePlus versions its Linux build separately — 1.7.0 in August 2026, next to 26.10.22 on macOS in September. Different numbers because they’re different release trains. Features land on macOS and reach Linux months later, or not yet: Redis only showed up on Linux in June 2026, years behind macOS. As of that August changelog, Linux was still without the ElasticSearch driver, Mongo Shell, custom themes, code folding, cell selection and Entra ID login.

Seaquel builds all three platforms from one codebase in one release. That’s not a claim about which app is better made. It only matters if you’re the one waiting.

What Seaquel does differently

Visual tooling, mostly, and none of it behind a paywall: EXPLAIN output drawn as a diagram, an ERD viewer, dashboards running on live queries, and a canvas where tables, queries and charts connect to each other.

Sharing works differently too. A project is a .seaquel/ directory you commit to Git, so saved queries and dashboards get reviewed like code. Credentials never sync — that’s the point of doing it this way.

Switching over

Seaquel reads TablePlus’s saved connections. Import them, type your passwords in once, and you’re back where you were.

Seaquel vs TablePlus, feature by feature

Every row links to the source it was checked against. Last verified 23 September 2026.

Feature
Seaquel
TablePlus
Price
Free for personal use; annual license for commercial use
$99–$129 once, includes 1 year of updates

Different models rather than different numbers: TablePlus is perpetual, Seaquel's commercial license is a yearly subscription with a perpetual fallback to the version you had.

Free tier
The full app, for personal use
2 tabs, 2 windows, 2 filters
Source available
MIT licensed

Seaquel's source is MIT, but a commercial license is still required for work use — that restriction is my policy, not the license.

Database engines
6
~15
NoSQL engines (Mongo, Redis, Cassandra)
Linux build on the same release line

TablePlus ships Linux as a separate 1.x line at roughly monthly cadence, against a near-weekly 26.x line on macOS.

SSH tunneling
Review changes before committing

Both tools stage edits for review. TablePlus calls it Safe Mode; Seaquel calls it Pending Changes.

iOS app
Plugin API
JavaScript
Visual query plans
ERD viewer
Git-based project sharing
Interactive SQL tutorials

Where TablePlus is better

Reasons to pick TablePlus over Seaquel.

Engine breadth

TablePlus connects to around fifteen engines, including MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis, Snowflake, BigQuery and ClickHouse. Seaquel supports six, all of them relational or embedded. If your stack includes a document or key-value store, stop reading here.

Actually native

TablePlus is written in Swift and Objective-C on macOS and C# on Windows. Seaquel is a Tauri app — a Rust core with a web-technology interface. Tauri is far lighter than Electron, but a hand-written native UI is still a native UI, and on macOS it shows.

An iOS client, included

TablePlus licenses bundle activations for a companion iOS app with SSH and TLS support. Seaquel is desktop and self-hosted web only, with no mobile client and none planned.

A plugin ecosystem

TablePlus documents a JavaScript plugin API and has real community plugins built on it. Seaquel's only extension surface today is DuckDB extensions, which isn't the same thing.

Nine years of shipping

TablePlus has released continuously since early 2017. Seaquel's first commit was December 2025. Maturity never shows up in a feature list. It shows up when you hit something strange on a Friday afternoon and the app already handles it.

What about speed and memory?

Neither TablePlus nor I publish benchmark numbers, and the figures you'll find in comparison articles never say how they were measured. I'd rather not add to that. I'm testing both apps on the same machine, and the numbers will show up here with the versions, the hardware and the method.

Moving across from TablePlus

Seaquel reads TablePlus's saved connections, so you're not retyping your whole connection list. Passwords don't come across — they stay in your system keychain and you enter them once, the first time you connect.

Download Seaquel

Common questions

Is TablePlus on Linux still in alpha?

No. TablePlus marked its Linux build stable in November 2023, and the widely repeated claim that it's alpha is out of date. The accurate criticism is narrower: Linux runs on a separate 1.x version line at roughly monthly cadence, while macOS ships a 26.x line close to weekly, so Linux users wait longer for new features.

Can I import my TablePlus connections into Seaquel?

Yes. Seaquel reads TablePlus's saved connections directly. Passwords aren't imported — those stay in your system keychain and you re-enter them on first connect.

Is Seaquel cheaper than TablePlus?

It depends on how long you keep the tool. TablePlus is a one-time $99–$129 purchase with a year of updates; Seaquel is free for personal use and charges an annual license for commercial use. Over enough years, a perpetual license wins on price.

Does Seaquel support MongoDB or Redis like TablePlus does?

No. Seaquel supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, SQL Server and DuckDB. There's no MongoDB, Redis or Cassandra support, and connection strings for them are explicitly rejected.

How this page is kept honest

Everything above about TablePlus was checked against their own pages on 23 September 2026. Prices and platform support move around. If something here is out of date, tell me and I'll fix it.

Sources

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