saferowCompare · Beekeeper Studio
saferow and Beekeeper Studio.
Beekeeper Studio is an open-source, cross-platform SQL editor with a free Community edition and an AI Shell in its paid plans. Both apps are built on Electron. saferow is Mac-only and puts its effort into what happens before a change runs.
Checked 3 October 2026. Every Beekeeper Studio figure links to Beekeeper Studio’s own pages, or says where else it comes from. Something out of date? Tell us and we will fix it.
Choose Beekeeper Studio if
- You work on Windows or Linux as well as the Mac.
- You want open source and a free Community edition with Read Only Mode.
- You need a database saferow doesn’t cover.
Choose saferow if
- You want the agent in the free tier for reading, and its changes counted and held for you with Pro.
- You want to pay once rather than a yearly subscription.
- You want Rewind, a ledger of every write, and models that run on the Mac by default.
side by side
Feature by feature.
| Feature | saferow | Beekeeper Studio |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free tier forever. Pro $24 once for 3 Macs, every 1.x update. Business $49 a seat. | Community free. Indie $9 a month billed yearly ($18 monthly); Professional $14; Business $18. Paid features stay after 12 months of payments. (source) |
| Platforms | macOS 13 or later, Apple silicon only. | macOS, Windows and Linux. (source) |
| Databases | MySQL, MariaDB, Postgres and SQLite. | Many SQL databases; see its site for the list. (source) |
| Built with | Electron (Chromium). We publish no speed or memory comparison. | Electron, like saferow. (source) |
| AI | Agent first: plans, reads, charts, proposes fixes and migrations. Runs models itself on the Mac by default; Ollama, LM Studio, oMLX, or a cloud model with your own key. | AI Shell in all paid plans, with your own key; it asks before running SQL, with an option to always allow read-only queries. (source) |
| Writes by an agent | Every agent and MCP write is dry-run in a rolled-back transaction, counted, and held for one approval bound to the count; Touch ID on production. Agents are refused DROP, TRUNCATE and DELETE without WHERE on production. | AI Shell asks before it runs a query. Read Only Mode is free since 6.1. (source) |
| Undo after a write | Rewind, from a restore point saved before each write: 7 days free, 30 with Pro. | None found; 6.0 added a query audit for the local workspace. (source) |
| MCP server | Six tools through a signed shim; each client paired once; safe reads; changes only as proposals you approve. Free: one connection, read-only. | None found. (source) |
| Telemetry | None, in the app and on the website. | “By default we don’t even know when you install the app.” (source) |
| Source code | Closed source. Every safety claim can be checked with the built-in self-test. | Open source (Community edition). (source) |
trying it
Three steps to try saferow.
- Install saferow from the download page. The free tier needs no account.
- Add a database (⇧⌘N). saferow finds the hosts in your
~/.ssh/configand the databases in Docker on this Mac. - Connect once. saferow checks each step, tells you which one failed and how to fix it, and saves the connection when it works.
questions
Asked about Beekeeper Studio.
Both are Electron. What’s different?
The emphasis. saferow is built around a Safety Kernel: an agent’s writes are dry-run, counted and held for one approval bound to the count, and Rewind keeps a way back. Beekeeper Studio is a broader cross-platform editor.