SQL Formatter — Beautify MySQL, PostgreSQL, BigQuery & SQLite

Real-world use cases

• Cleaning up a 400-line query copied out of a BI tool

  Analytics dashboards export SQL as one giant single-line string with no breaks. Paste it here, pick BigQuery, hit format, and the 12 CTEs and 8 JOINs unfold into readable blocks in under a second. You can finally see which subquery joins on the wrong key before pasting it into a code review.

• Standardizing keyword case across a team's migration files

  One teammate writes select, another writes SELECT, a third mixes both. Before committing a 30-file migration, run each file through with keyword case set to UPPER and 2-space indent. Now every file in the PR reads the same way, and the diff stops being polluted by casing noise that hides the real schema changes.

• Decoding an ORM-generated query you have to debug

  Hibernate or Prisma logs a slow query as one unbroken 600-character line with cryptic alias names like t0, t1, t2. Drop it in, pick your dialect, and the WHERE clause and nested EXISTS become legible. You spot the missing index on t2.user_id in about 20 seconds instead of squinting at a wall of text.

• Preparing query snippets for documentation or a blog post

  You are writing a runbook and want every example query to look consistent. Format each snippet with 4-space indent and lower-case keywords for a softer reading style, then paste straight into your Markdown. Because nothing leaves the tab, internal table names in the examples never touch a third-party server.

Common pitfalls

• Formatting BigQuery SQL under ANSI mode, then wondering why QUALIFY or a backtick-quoted `project.dataset.table` breaks. Always match the dialect dropdown to your actual engine first.

• Leaving the indent style on "Tabular Left" for deeply nested CTEs and assuming the output is buggy. It is just an alignment choice; switch to "Standard" for normal block indentation.

• Pasting a query with an unterminated string or a stray backtick and blaming the formatter. It needs parseable SQL, so fix the syntax error (often a missing closing quote) before formatting.

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