TablePro and TableStudio are both native Mac database clients with an MCP server, and they put their effort in different places. Choose TablePro if its free core is enough for you, you want open source, or you need one of its 35+ engines. Choose TableStudio if your coding agents change data, not just read it, and you want production changes staged for review, dry runs and undo, with every feature in one license instead of spread across plans.
Read-only is the easy part
TablePro's MCP server starts read-only, and routes every write through the connection's Safe Mode, which can ask you to confirm it. That keeps an agent from doing damage, and also from doing much work. TableStudio is built for the next step, when you want the agent to fix the data or ship the migration:
- Try it on a copy. The agent can make a sandbox, a throwaway local copy of the database, and run the risky migration there first.
- Know the blast radius. A dry run executes the write against the real rows and rolls back, reporting exactly what would change.
- Stage, don't prompt. Production changes land in your review queue as a migration you apply with Touch ID, instead of a prompt mid-conversation.
- Undo anything an agent did. Every agent change on every engine is saved first, so it can be undone, not only the edits you save in the grid.
- Keep rows out of the model. Set a database to Structure only and the agent works from the schema without ever seeing a row value.
At a glance
| TableStudio | TablePro | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | Mac (macOS 15+), iPhone and iPad on the way | Mac (macOS 13+), iPhone and iPad |
| Source | Agent plugin on GitHub | Open source, AGPL v3, including paid features |
| Engines | 8 | 35+, including MongoDB, Redis, Oracle, DuckDB, Snowflake |
| Price | $49 once, every feature | Core free; Starter $2.99 a month, $24 a year or $59 once, for 2 Macs |
| Features behind a paid plan | None | Compare & Sync, Query Insights, result charts, Data Rewind, iCloud Sync, encrypted export, environment variables; team sharing on Team |
| MCP server | Yes, plus a free plugin with skills for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and OpenCode | Yes, 47 tools, off by default, guided setup for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor and Zed |
| Agent permissions | Per database: Off, Structure only, Read, Read & write | Per connection: Blocked or Read Only for external clients; tokens scoped to named connections |
| Agent writes | Staged as a migration for your review on production, applied with Touch ID | Go through the connection's Safe Mode: from silent, through confirmation prompts, to read-only |
| Dry run with the real rows affected | Yes | Preview of the SQL |
| Undo | Every AI change, foreign-key cascades included, every engine | Data Rewind for recent saves (Starter, 7 days) |
| Log of agent activity | Agent Center, per conversation, 30 days | MCP Activity, per call, 90 days, exportable to CSV |
Blocks psql and migration tools writing to production | Yes, the plugin's shell guard | No |
| Local servers and sandboxes | Yes | No |
| Index advisor, hidden indexes | Yes (PostgreSQL) | No |
| Health and schema checks | 96 health, 67 schema | Server dashboard |
| Backups | Native dumps to Mac or S3, restore points | Backup & Restore |
| Schema compare | Yes, every plan | Compare & Sync, on Starter |
Where TablePro is stronger
- A free core, and open source. The basic app costs nothing and has no trial clock, and all of its source, paid features included, is on GitHub. Schema compare, Query Insights, undo and sync are the paid part.
- Breadth. Over 35 engines, from MongoDB and Redis to Snowflake, BigQuery and Spanner.
- A careful MCP server. It starts read-only. Tokens are scoped to named connections, and every write goes through Safe Mode. DROP and TRUNCATE need a full-access token and your approval each time. Statements that touch server files or run server-side code are refused.
Where TableStudio is different
Built for agents that change data. Read-only is the easy part. The hard part is letting an agent fix rows, backfill a column or run a migration without risking production. TableStudio lets the agent dry-run a write and report the real rows it would change. On production the change is staged as a migration, with its reason and SQL, and you apply it with Touch ID. Before any agent change, TableStudio saves the rows it touches, foreign-key cascades included, so that one change can be undone.
Guardrails outside MCP too. Agents that can't get what they want through MCP often run psql with the URL in your .env. TableStudio's plugin stops psql, mysql and 17 migration and seed tools from writing to production from the terminal.
It runs and tunes your databases. Start, stop and create Postgres, MySQL, ClickHouse and CockroachDB servers on your Mac, and make throwaway sandbox copies of any database. On PostgreSQL, the Index Advisor finds missing indexes from your real workload, and you can hide an index to see what would slow down before dropping it. 96 health checks and 67 schema checks run across engines.
Everything included, once. $49 gets every feature, with no plan tiers and nothing that stops working when a subscription lapses. Schema compare, Query Insights, undo for AI changes, backups and sync are all in the one license.
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