Monitoring, Studio, and query tuning as deep as a managed service — for the databases you run on Kubernetes, VMs, or bare metal. Free to connect, query, and monitor; Pro and Platform add Optimize, Diagnose, provisioning, and backups.
MongoDB and PostgreSQL are GA; MySQL, Redis, Kafka, and the other discovered engines are Beta. Built for self-hosted deployments, not Atlas or vendor DBaaS. Works offline after install.
DBHelm is a desktop app
Open on a Mac, Windows, or Linux computer to install. You can bookmark this page to visit later.
Real screenshot · More product views
Engines DBHelm discovers + manages
How it works
Connect → Discover (or provision) → Operate. No agents, no sidecars. Free email to download; offline-first after install.
Import kubeconfig or Direct Connect
Free
Open DBHelm, go to Environments, and import your kubeconfig — auto-detects cloud provider, region, and cluster. Or use Direct Connect for any database with just a host and port. No agents, no sidecars.
Environments → Add Environment → Import Kubeconfig
Name: prod-cluster
Provider: ✓ Detected GKE · us-central1
Auth: ✓ Kubeconfig valid
Status: ✓ Connected
Scanning namespaces... done
✓ 4 namespaces · 81 databases discoveredAuto-detect across 56 engines, or spin up fresh
Free discover · Platform provision
DBHelm scans CRDs, StatefulSets, and Deployments to discover databases across 56 engines — Free forever. Need a new cluster? The Create wizard provisions via 17 built-in providers (Platform license) covering DB-Engines top-10: CNPG / Percona PG / PSMDB / MongoDB Community / MySQL Operator / Redis / K8ssandra / SQL Server / Oracle / Db2 / Strimzi on K8s, plus AWS RDS + Cloud SQL + Azure DB Flexible Server.
All Databases → 81 discovered across 4 environments
PostgreSQL (CloudNativePG) ×3 ● Healthy
MongoDB (Percona PSMDB) ×2 ● Healthy
Redis (Bitnami Helm) ×4 ● Healthy
Kafka (Strimzi Operator) ×1 ● Healthy
Elasticsearch (ECK) ×2 ● Healthy
+ 69 more across 14 types
Or: Clusters → Create → CNPG / PSMDB / Strimzi / RDS / …Monitor, query, optimize, back up, federate, migrate, cost-track
Free · Pro · Platform
Free: real-time monitoring, safe Console / Studio, fleet cost rollup. Pro: Advisor, 8-tool Optimize suite, AI Diagnose, alerts, BYO-AI. Platform: backups & PITR, federation, migration, declarative GitOps, Operator Hub, governance. All from one desktop app — free email to download; offline-first after install.
┌─ Real-time Monitoring ─────────────┐
│ CPU: ████████░░ 78% Conn: 142 │
│ Mem: ██████░░░░ 62% QPS: 2.4k │
│ IOPS: █████░░░░ 51% Lag: 0.2s │
│ ⚠ 1 alert: Buffer pool hit < 99% │
└────────────────────────────────────┘
SELECT * FROM pg_app.users JOIN my_orders.orders …
✓ Federated query · 1,243 rows · 124msProduct
Unedited screenshots of the Free tier against a self-hosted MongoDB replica set and a PostgreSQL primary with a streaming standby — the same desktop app you download.
Prefer a walkthrough? Email hello@dbhelm.com for a live demo — or download Free and explore in under two minutes.
Features
Replace scattered CLI tools, dashboards, and scripts with a single control plane that understands every database — from PostgreSQL to Kafka to vector databases.
Auto-detect databases across Kubernetes via CRDs, operators, Helm, and StatefulSets. Direct Connect for VMs and bare metal — including self-hosted MongoDB you operate (not Atlas).
Engine-level metrics — oplog lag, WiredTiger cache, replication slots, dead tuples, query latency — not just pod CPU charts. GA for MongoDB and PostgreSQL; InnoDB, Galera, and Kafka consumer lag in Beta.
Chat with an AI DBA scoped to one database or the fleet. Read-only tools, evidence-backed answers, drafts for humans to apply. BYO OpenAI / Anthropic / Ollama.
Window-scoped root-cause analysis from logs, engine internals, slow queries, FTDC (Mongo), and TSDB baselines — plus heuristic no-AI mode.
Scheduled backups with retention, one-click restore with pre-flight checks, and volume snapshot support with audit trail.
Live MongoDB cluster→cluster migration with preflight, continuous sync, and guided cutover — minimal downtime.
AES-256-GCM credentials, RBAC, sandboxed Electron, offline-first. No product telemetry by default.
Import kubeconfig and go — or Direct Connect with host and port. No agents or sidecars.
All databases across environments in one view. Multi-cluster, multi-cloud, multi-org.
Highlights below. Full depth lives in Docs and the Intelligence tour.
Query / Code Optimizer, Index Janitor, Schema Doctor, Autovacuum map, Pool Fit, Plan Watch, per-table Cost — DDL generated, never auto-executed.
Self-hosted Mongo only: PSMDB, Community / Bitnami / STS, Direct Connect. Advisors unlock with Pro.
Native IDE for Mongo, SQL, Redis, Kafka, Elasticsearch, vector DBs, Neo4j, InfluxDB + SaaS dry-run cost.
Read-only default. Destructive ops blocked until you confirm; mutations audit-logged.
K8s operators + RDS / Cloud SQL / Azure Flexible Server from one wizard. Operator Hub for one-click prereqs.
Install and pin CNPG, PSMDB, Mongo Community, MySQL, Redis, K8ssandra, Strimzi, Percona PG, Oracle, Db2u.
DuckDB attaches Postgres + MySQL catalogs for ANSI SQL joins across engines.
Declarative YAML plan/apply/export plus event log replay for drift and rollback.
Email / Slack / webhook alerts; optional Incident RCA scoped to the breaching pod.
BYO OpenAI / Anthropic / Ollama. LLM never auto-executes — classifier + cost dry-run first.
VMs, bare metal, cloud-managed SQL, self-hosted Mongo via TCP / SSH / SOCKS5. No K8s required.
Community provisioners and adapters via @dbhelm/sdk, loaded from ~/.dbhelm/plugins/.
Every engine below auto-discovers from your Kubernetes clusters; most also work via Direct Connect on VMs you control. MongoDB and PostgreSQL are GA; the rest are Beta.
+ Oracle, Snowflake, DynamoDB, Cosmos DB, BigQuery, Redshift, Aurora, Db2, SAP HANA, and more
Intelligence
Pro: Performance / Query / Slow-log / Code Advisors (Mongo + Postgres), Optimize suite, Upgrade Advisor, and Right-Sizing recommendations. Platform: Playbooks, DR Testing, Compliance, Capacity Forecasting. Transaction Tracer and AI Diagnose are Pro.
EOL radar · Pro
Detect EOL versions across your fleet via in-pod version probes (or declared version on Direct Connect), see recommended upgrade paths, and run pre-flight compatibility checks before you touch a pod.
Idle pods → recommendations · Pro · K8s
Find over- and under-provisioned K8s workloads. Compare CPU/memory requests vs metrics-server usage with concrete per-pod recommendations and a fleet efficiency score. Apply resize is Platform (Maintenance).
Runbook automation · Platform · K8s
Five pre-built diagnostic playbooks for 3am incidents: high CPU, replication lag, pool exhaustion, disk, slow queries. Auto-runs checks via kubectl exec; findings ranked by severity.
Failover simulation · Platform · K8s
Score every K8s-discovered database on DR readiness. Evaluate backup freshness, replica health, and failover readiness — then dry-run failover without touching production.
Policy-as-code · Platform
Build policies from seven built-in checks — backup, alerting, replicas, SSL, connections, resource limits, password policy. Per-DB pass/fail with severity. Session-scoped today; persistence on the roadmap.
Days-until-full · Platform · K8s metrics
Linear-regression projections for storage, memory, and connections. Days-until-full, growth rate, and urgency tiers from metrics-server + engine queries.
Live queries · Pro · K8s
Real-time active / slow queries and connections for PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, and Redis. Lock graphs for PG + MySQL. Part of AI Diagnose / Platform.
Every tool activates automatically when you connect a database. No agents, no extra scrape configs, no PromQL to write.
Every recommendation understands the engine — Galera wsrep, oplog, Patroni HA, Raft, consumer-group lag — not just pod CPU.
All analysis runs locally on your machine. No default telemetry, no cloud roundtrip, no compliance conversation with your security team.
Bring your own OpenAI / Anthropic / Ollama key. Every LLM-suggested query passes through the destructive-op classifier + cost dry-run. The LLM never auto-executes.
Embedded DuckDB attaches Postgres + MySQL Direct Connections as virtual catalogs. Write ANSI SQL across them; joins push down to native scanners.
Counts every database in your fleet — provisioned + K8s-discovered + Direct Connect. Per-table cost attribution drilldown (70% storage + 30% compute). Storage tier ladder (gp2→gp3, io1→gp3, pd-ssd→pd-balanced).
Query Optimizer · Code Optimizer (v1.23) · Index Janitor (v1.25) · Schema Doctor · Autovacuum Pressure Map · Pool Fit (v1.26) · Plan Watch (v1.27) · Cost. Eight focused tools — each does one thing well, ships ready-to-run DDL or recommendations, never executes your data.
MongoDB Atlas, AWS RDS, Confluent Cloud, ClickHouse Cloud and the rest charge 2–4× the raw infrastructure cost for the same hardware. DBHelm gives you the monitoring, backups, DR, and day-2 operations of a managed service on your own cloud — so you pocket the difference.
3 nodes · 16 GB RAM · 100 GB data
$1.04/hr on AWS + backup + egress
3× r6i.large · 300 GB gp3
$5,412 per year
Primary + 2 replicas · 32 GB RAM · 500 GB data
Multi-AZ premium + gp3 + backup
3× r6i.xlarge · 1.5 TB gp3
$7,500 per year
3 brokers · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 GB logs
Base + ingress + egress + storage
3× m6i.2xlarge · 1.5 TB gp3
$22,800 per year
The managed-DB markup is the premium you pay to skip ops work. DBHelm removes most of that work — auto-discovery, monitoring, backups, DR testing, incident playbooks, right-sizing, capacity forecasting — so the markup stops making sense.
Use Cases
Whether you're building a platform, responding to incidents, or optimizing performance — DBHelm adapts to your workflow.
"We need one tool to provision + manage Postgres on RDS, Mongo on K8s, and Kafka via Strimzi — without writing terraform glue and bespoke runbooks."
Give your teams a unified provisioning + management plane. The wizard creates clusters via 17 built-in providers covering every DB-Engines top-10 engine; the declarative state YAML codifies your fleet so a CI pipeline can apply it.
"At 3am when a database is slow, I need engine-level metrics — InnoDB lock waits, replication lag, slow queries — not pod CPU. And I need to query the live DB without fear of running DROP by mistake."
Engine-aware dashboards, the live transaction tracer, the AI assistant that classifies destructive ops before you can run them, and a console that defaults to read-only. Plus the drift detector tells you when live state doesn't match desired.
"I manage Percona on K8s, RDS Postgres, a bare-metal MySQL we want to migrate to Postgres, and we're trying to figure out which managed DB is bleeding money."
On-demand + scheduled backups with one-click restore. MySQL→Postgres migration in three clicks. Eight Optimize tools (Query/Code Optimizer, Index Janitor, Schema Doctor, Autovacuum Pressure Map, Pool Fit, Plan Watch, Cost) cover everything from query rewriting to wraparound emergencies. Cross-engine federation lets you JOIN across Postgres + MySQL DBs without ETL.
Comparison
Built for the databases you operate yourself. Here is what it does, what is still Beta, and where a managed service is the better choice.
Deep dives: vs Atlas · vs Compass · vs pgAdmin
| Feature | You operate DBHelm | Managed DBaaS Atlas, RDS, Cloud SQL | kubectl | K8s Dashboards | DB GUIs DBeaver, TablePlus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Visibility | |||||
| Deep monitoring + Studio for self-hosted MongoDB and PostgreSQL | Yes | Partial | Partial | No | Partial |
| Kubernetes-native discovery (operators, CRDs, StatefulSets, Helm) | Yes | No | Partial | Partial | No |
| Direct Connect to VMs and bare metal (SSH tunnel / SOCKS5) | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
| Every other discovered engine (MySQL, Redis, Kafka, Elasticsearch, ...) | Beta | Partial | Partial | No | Partial |
| Operations | |||||
| Safe-by-default Console (read-only default, destructive-op gate, audit log) | Yes | Partial | No | No | Partial |
| Index, schema, and query advice with DDL you review and apply — Pro | Yes | Partial | No | No | No |
| Root-cause analysis from logs + engine signals, on your own AI key — Pro | Yes | Partial | No | No | No |
| Provisioning, backups, and PITR on K8s operators and cloud — Platform | Yes | Yes | Partial | No | No |
| Trade-offs | |||||
| Works offline; credentials never leave your machine | Yes | No | Yes | Partial | Yes |
| Runs the database for you (automatic failover, patching, scaling) | No | Yes | No | No | No |
| Browser access for the whole team, nothing to install | No | Yes | No | Yes | No |
Managed DBaaS (Atlas, RDS, Cloud SQL) wins on hands-off backups, failover, and zero-ops scaling — for its own vendor instances. DBHelm is the control plane for databases you operate (K8s, VMs, bare metal, cloud-managed SQL via Direct Connect). Self-hosted Mongo is in scope; Atlas is not a first-class target. Use both: let managed services run what they run, and use DBHelm for the rest of your fleet. The full feature list lives in the Docs.
Works with your infrastructure
Trust
DBHelm is a desktop app. Your credentials and metadata stay on your machine. Read-only is the default; destructive operations require explicit confirmation.
All credentials and kubeconfigs encrypted at rest in the local SQLite store
DROP / DELETE / TRUNCATE / dropDatabase / TopicDelete blocked until you confirm
Super-admin / admin / read-only roles with org isolation; JWT HS256 + token versioning
After a free email download, the app runs offline on your machine. Optional error reporting only. See /security.
Proof you can verify
We're a young project. Use these links for evaluation and procurement — then download and judge the product yourself.
Shipping product
v1.94.1
macOS · Windows · Linux desktop builds
Test coverage
5264+
Unit tests in CI on every push
Source license
BSL 1.1
Converts to Apache 2.0 after 4 years
Security posture
Documented
No SOC 2 claim — honest overview
Every release runs the full test suite on Linux + macOS + Windows before binaries are published. Coverage spans destructive-op classification, type mapping, rate-card lookups, federation, EXPLAIN safety, credential redaction, and more.
See full release historyEvery release ships with a per-feature changelog: what shipped, what's in beta, what we cut. No vapor — what's on the changelog is what's in the binary you download.
Read the changelogmacOS DMG (Apple Silicon), Windows installer, and Linux AppImage + .deb on every tag. Free email signup to download; no credit card for Free tier.
Download v1.94.1Volume seats, trials, or NDA review: Contact sales · Used DBHelm and want to share your experience? Email hello@dbhelm.com
Pricing
Free forever for connect, query, monitor, and Studio. Pro adds Advisor, Optimize, Diagnose, and alerts. Platform adds provisioning, backups, GitOps, and governance. Contact hello@dbhelm.com for Pro or Platform.
Contact us for pricing
Contact us for pricing
Compare: vs Atlas · vs Compass · vs pgAdmin · feature table
FAQ
More questions? Reach out at hello@dbhelm.com
Get Started
Download DBHelm and get full visibility into your entire database infrastructure in under two minutes. Free to start.
macOS (Apple Silicon) · Windows · Linux · Free to start · Free email to download