Getting started
Do I need an account?
Not for the databases on your own machine — those are free forever. Here is what a plan does cover, and what stays on your machine either way.
No, not to open AddisDB and not to use it on your own machine. Download it, launch it, and connect to any local database — the whole client, every engine, with no account and no card. There is no row limit, no connection limit and no expiry, and the check runs offline, so AddisDB never calls home just to let you connect.
What counts as your own machine
Anything on loopback (localhost, 127.x, ::1, 0.0.0.0, host.docker.internal or a *.localhost name), anything over a Unix socket, and any file-based engine — SQLite, DuckDB, CSV, Parquet, Excel, GeoJSON and the rest. A database running in Docker on your laptop is local. A database on a server, in RDS, or behind an SSH tunnel is not.
When you do need a plan
- Connecting to a database that is not on this machine — a remote host, or a cloud service like Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift or Cloud SQL.
- Connecting through an SSH or SSM tunnel, which exists precisely to reach a host that is not local.
- Tagging a connection prod, which is what turns on the write guards and the approval path. The local, dev, test and staging tags stay free.
No engine is ever locked behind a plan — every engine and data-file format is in every tier, including the free one. When something does need a plan, AddisDB tells you at the moment you connect and shows you the options; nothing you have already saved is taken away.
Signing in
- Launch AddisDB and accept the licence agreement.
- Open Account from Settings and sign in, or start a trial from the pricing page.
- If you were given an upgrade code, choose Redeem a code and paste it.
If a subscription lapses you drop back to the free tier and keep working — local databases keep opening exactly as before, and only the connections that needed a plan stop.
What never leaves your machine
Having a plan does not change where your data lives. Your database passwords stay in your operating system’s secure credential store, queries run directly from your machine to your database, and result rows are never uploaded. Signing in carries your plan, not your data.
Working offline
Once your plan is confirmed on a machine, AddisDB keeps working without a network connection — it re-checks in the background rather than locking you out mid-flight. You only need connectivity to sign in the first time, to switch accounts, or to move to a new machine.