Inlet vs Beekeeper Studio

In short

Beekeeper Studio is a SQL client for macOS, Windows and Linux, built with Electron and Vue. Its Community Edition is free and open source (GPLv3); paid plans, from $9 per user a month billed yearly as of October 2026, add more engines, import and export, ER diagrams, an AI shell and shared cloud workspaces.

Inlet is a free native Mac app for PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite and MongoDB, with no paid tier. It’s new (version 0.1) and needs macOS 26 Tahoe or later. If you want a Beekeeper Studio alternative for Mac and you only use those five engines, Inlet gives you MongoDB, import and export, and PostgreSQL tools without a subscription. If you need Windows or Linux, more engines or team sharing, Beekeeper covers that.

At a glance

As of October 2026, from Beekeeper Studio’s website and GitHub repository.

Where Beekeeper Studio is stronger

• Windows and Linux. Beekeeper runs on all three desktop systems with the same features. Inlet is Mac-only and needs macOS 26.
• More engines. SQL Server, Redshift, BigQuery and Redis are in the free edition; paid plans add Oracle, Cassandra, DuckDB, ClickHouse, Snowflake, DynamoDB, Trino and more. Inlet has five.
• Open source. The Community Edition’s code is on GitHub under GPLv3, and the paid features’ source is available too.
• Team features. Cloud workspaces on the Professional and Business plans sync connections and saved queries across devices and share them with your team. Inlet has no sharing or sync.
• Track record. Beekeeper has been in development since 2019, released since 2020, and ships monthly releases. Inlet is at version 0.1.
• Enterprise sign-in. The Business plan supports Amazon IAM, Azure Entra ID, Kerberos and Windows authentication.
• Extras. An AI shell for writing SQL on paid plans, Query Magics that turn result columns into readable output such as progress bars and links, and a plugin system.

Where Inlet is stronger

• Everything is free, for any organisation. Inlet has no paid tier. Beekeeper’s Community Edition is intended for students, individuals, non-profits and businesses with fewer than 10 employees and/or under $1 million in annual revenue; larger organisations are asked to buy a licence.
• MongoDB, import and export, and ER diagrams included. In Beekeeper these need a paid plan (MongoDB needs Professional). Inlet browses MongoDB collections as tables and runs mongosh-syntax queries, imports CSV, and exports CSV, JSON, SQL INSERT statements and Excel.
• A native Mac app. Inlet is written in Swift with SwiftUI and AppKit; Beekeeper is an Electron app. Inlet keeps passwords in the Keychain and runs SSH tunnels through the system ssh, so ~/.ssh/config, the SSH agent and the 1Password agent work as they do in Terminal.
• PostgreSQL depth. EXPLAIN drawn as a tree with the slowest step highlighted, an Activity monitor that shows which query blocks which, roles and grants, a health check, schema compare, and backups with the bundled pg_dump and pg_restore. Beekeeper’s feature list doesn’t include a plan view, an activity monitor or role management, and its backup and restore is a paid feature.

Moving from Beekeeper Studio

Inlet doesn’t read Beekeeper’s saved connections. For each one:

1. Note the host, port, user and database from the connection in Beekeeper.
2. In Inlet, choose Connect from URL and paste a URL such as postgres://<user>@<host>:5432/<database>, mysql://<user>@<host>:3306/<database> or mongodb://<user>@<host>:27017/<database>, or fill in New Connection. Inlet fills the form from the URL.
3. For SQLite, open the same database file in Inlet.
4. Add SSH or TLS settings if you used them. Passwords can be saved in the Keychain.

If your PostgreSQL connections are in ~/.pgpass, pg_service.conf or a .env file’s DATABASE_URL, Import Connections in the Welcome window reads them.

Which to choose

Choose Beekeeper Studio if you need Windows or Linux, use engines beyond Inlet’s five, want an open-source tool, or want to share connections and queries with your team. The Community Edition is a capable free option for individuals and small businesses.

Choose Inlet if you’re on macOS 26, your databases are PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite or MongoDB, and you want a native Mac app with everything included, at any size of organisation, plus PostgreSQL tools such as query plans, the Activity monitor and backups. Inlet is new, so if Beekeeper is working well for you, try Inlet beside it first.