psql
Ranked 2 of 3 command-line clients by recommenders
People recommend psql for dumping table subsets, editing queries in vim with \e, and as a daily driver. Critics say it is error prone and unsafe to give to agents.
People recommend psql for dumping table subsets, editing queries in vim with \e, and as a daily driver. Critics say it is error prone and unsafe to give to agents.
14 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 57%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Editing queries in vim via \e
“psql has the \e command which helps but again I would rather have something named”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “A shell exclamation mark is not for yelling. Be lazy” “editing in vim invoked from psql with \e”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Tusk for macOS and Gnome”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Poor fit for agent access
“the MCP server is far better optimised than using psql”
Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Open-Source Postgres MCP Server and Natural Language Agent” “Letting them access psql is a recipe for disaster”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “MCP is dead. Long live the CLI” Error prone and awkward
“psql is pretty awful at identifying this”
Comment from 27 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Restoredrill – proves your Postgres backups restore” “bash and psql were error prone”
Comment from 9 May 2026 in “Mythical Man Month”
Other command-line clients people recommend
The two most recommended other command-line clients, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Telnet client | 19 | 9 | 68% | 4 | — | Approved |
| psqlThis page | 8 | 6 | 57% | 5 | — | — |
| emacsclient | 5 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
11 of the 14 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“psql is pretty awful at identifying this”
“psql has the \e command which helps but again I would rather have something named”
“I find this to put my psql in a better place as a daily driver”
“bash and psql were error prone”
“editing in vim invoked from psql with \e”
“In 2026 it feels absolutely bonkers that a software dev team would continue to put out something like this.”
“weird signal handling in local tooling can still become a cross-session bug”
“Letting them access psql is a recipe for disaster”
“other CLIs I use often in conjunction with agents”
“You can use "psql" to dump subsets of data from tables and then later import them.”
“the MCP server is far better optimised than using psql”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.