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mathesar-foundation
mathesar
Svelte2021–2026
mathesar-foundation / mathesar

mathesar

An intuitive spreadsheet-like interface that lets users of all technical skill levels view, edit, query, and collaborate on Postgres data directly. 100% open source and self hosted, with native Postgres access control.

Web DevelopmentData & DatabasesSelf-hostedProductivityMobile & Desktop
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
6Distinct people
33Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
5.2KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

An intuitive spreadsheet-like interface that lets users of all technical skill levels view, edit, query, and collaborate on Postgres data directly. 100% open source and self hosted, with native Postgres access control.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

Yeah, interesting question! Our [team][0] is eight people who would probably give eight different answers. We've had some [debate][1] about whether or not to use types in…

seancolsen used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year33 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2021-04-24 15:58:03 UTC to 2026-06-17 16:20:17 UTC.

0510152021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 16 mentions; 1 submissions, 15 comments20232024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC16115
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110

What Hacker News says

33 sources
kgodey·Jun 17, 2026Submission

Show HN: Hosted version of Mathesar, intuitive open source UI built on Postgres

Hi HN! We just shipped the public beta of the hosted version of Mathesar, our open source “intuitive spreadsheet UI, full PostgreSQL power” project. Until now, using Mathesar meant installing and running it yourself. Now you can use Mathesar for free without having to maintain your own infrastructure at https://mathesar.cloud. Mathesar Cloud is run by the Mathesar maintainers through the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that already maintains the open source project. We’re committed to ALWAYS keeping Mathesar 100% open source (no open core), nonprofit, and treat self-hosting as a first-class citizen. We’re launching a hosted service in part to sustain the project in the long term while keeping our principles. We’re also excited to be making Mathesar accessible to users who cannot or do not want to self-host. Currently, we have a free plan that’s great
Read the rest
for solo projects, prototyping, and evaluating Mathesar for larger deployments. It’s scoped to a single database per user. We are using this early beta to learn what people need, as we work on launching more plans with feature parity with self-hosted Mathesar, including collaboration, control over Postgres roles and permissions, and connecting existing databases. I'd love your feedback on Mathesar in general, the Cloud version, or anything else! MORE ABOUT MATHESAR: Mathesar is a 100% open source project (we just got to 5000 stars!) that gives users a spreadsheet-like interface to PostgreSQL databases. You can connect an existing database or start a new one from scratch, it works the same either way. We aim for the UI to be familiar and intuitive for non-technical users while also using the full power of PostgreSQL without intermediate layers or abstractions. For example, our permissions system uses PostgreSQL roles and permissions directly. LINKS: - GitHub: https://github.com/mathesar-foundation/mathesar - Mathesar Cloud: https://mathesar.cloud - Announcement blog post: https://mathesar.org/blog/2026/06/17/announcing-mathesar-clo...
6 points · Open discussion
heckintime·Jul 23, 2025
At this point, it'd be easier to give your users access to DBeaver or Bigquery directly. Also limiting their access to certain views with prepared data to avoid expensive queries. For a UI based SQL tool I've used Looker few years ago and thought it was ok. I wonder how much AI tooling Google added since then to help with LookML generation. There are also other open source tools like mathesar (https://github.com/mathesar-foundation/mathesar) which look promising.
In SQL Injection as a Feature
kgodey·Jan 31, 2025
Just a heads-up, I’m opinionated on this! Every app has some terminology you need to learn to use it effectively, we just think that terminology should actually map to how databases work, rather than being an arbitrary abstraction. Instead of inventing our own terms, we stick to tables, records, schemas, and relationships so that users who learn Mathesar are also learning concepts that translate directly to Postgres (or relational databases in general). Making software approachable isn’t about hiding complexity, it’s about presenting it well. The UI patterns you use determine whether a system feels intuitive, not whether the underlying mental model is simple. A well-designed interface can make even complex concepts feel natural, while a bad one can make simple tasks frustrating. Mathesar doesn’t make databases approachable by pretending t
Read the rest
ables aren’t tables, it makes them approachable by using familiar interactions, and progressively exposing functionality as you need it. We do want to work on surveys ("forms") soon, and we're definitely thinking about bulk actions and integrations as well. Please feel free to open a feature request on https://github.com/mathesar-foundation/mathesar/issues for anything that would particularly help your use case.
In Mathesar – an intutive spreadsheet-like interface to Postgres data
seancolsen·Aug 23, 2023
I'm an engineer on the Mathesar core team and I'd just like to clarify that Mathesar does support grouping to some extent. Here is a screenshot[1] that demonstrates the grouping functionality. Grouping levels are unlimited. You can play with this functionality on our live demo[2]. It's worth mentioning that Mathesar does not yet have the capability to expand and collapse groups, but that feature is planned[3]. Best of luck building Visual DB! Nice to see more innovation in this space! [1]: https://mathesar.org/assets/crm-table-zoomed.png [2]: https://demo.mathesar.org/ [3]: https://github.com/centerofci/mathesar/issues/475
In Show HN: Visual DB – Airtable alternative for your own database
pavish·Mar 27, 2023
I agree with most of what the author says, except the part about reactivity. I attribute that sentiment to the author being less familiar with Svelte. I do think that people new to Svelte find it hard. It takes a while to understand how the `$` reactive statements work, and when and when-not to use it. When I first started working with Svelte, I tried to do things the React way and shared similar frustrations. Now that I've been working with Svelte for smaller and bigger projects for nearly 5 years (yes, since 2.0), I find Svelte's reactive pattern simple and intuitive. There are some aspects I find frustrating with Svelte. One example is being able to pass templates around. With React I'd just pass JSX, but since Svelte is statically compiled, I've had to create components for such scenarios. Slots don't cover all usecases. I can live wi
Read the rest
th this though. I have built a couple large projects using Svelte and haven't faced issues with scaling. I found Svelte to be quite flexible, which has enabled me to build fast, and maintain a performant codebase. My recent project is Mathesar, which has a large frontend codebase in Svelte + Typescript [1]. It's also open-source so you can check out the codebase. We use pretty much all of Svelte's features and we even implemented a full component library. Here's an old discussion for deciding which frontend library to use for Mathesar, where we selected Svelte [2]. We have had to establish a number of patterns (including around reactivity) so that new contributors don't break things, which happens more often than you think. Svelte's primary issue is a lack of established patterns, which makes it easy for new Svelte developers to get things wrong. React has a number of such patterns due to it's massive community. I believe as Svelte's community keeps growing and more projects choosing Svelte, this would be tackled. [1]: https://github.com/centerofci/mathesar [2]: https://github.com/centerofci/mathesar/discussions/55
In Thoughts on Svelte
kgodey·Mar 16, 2023
Mathesar core team member here. I don't want to distract from Outerbase's launch, but if you have time, would you be able to open an issue for the crash at https://github.com/centerofci/mathesar? We're still in alpha and relying on people checking out the project to report problems like these so we can fix them. Also, relationships without foreign keys is on our roadmap: https://github.com/centerofci/mathesar/discussions/2276
In Launch HN: Outerbase (YC W23) – A new UI and editor for your database

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