PostgreSQL

Postgres is a first-class engine in Quay’s Free tier. Full schema browser, FK-aware backup, restore preview, edit-as-draft, EXPLAIN tips, schema diff, SSH tunnel support — all native, no pg_dump required.

Connection

Field	Notes
Host	localhost, db.example.com, etc.
Port	5432 (default)
User · Password	Standard PG creds
Database	The default DB the session opens against
SSL mode	disable for local; require / verify-ca / verify-full for cloud
SSH tunnel	Optional — host/port/user, key or password auth

For connection strings: paste a postgres://user:pass@host:5432/db into the Quick connect field and Quay parses out the components.

Wire-compat presets

Same Postgres driver, slightly different catalog queries:

• CockroachDB — uses crdb_internal for some metadata
• YugabyteDB — Postgres-compatible with sharded tablespaces
• Neon — serverless Postgres, supports branches
• Supabase — Postgres + extra _supabase schemas
• Timescale — adds hypertable awareness in the schema browser
• AWS Redshift — Postgres dialect with STL_* system tables
• Aurora Postgres — Postgres + IAM auth
• Greenplum · Citus — distributed Postgres

Pick the preset on the Dialect dropdown when creating the connection.

Native tools

• FK-aware backup — pg_export.rs walks pg_constraint for topological ordering; emits in dump order with REPEATABLE READ consistency. See backup formats.
• Restore preview — parses dollar-quoted PG functions, DO $$ blocks, and \copy directives without running them.
• Streaming import — pg_import.rs parses statements one-at-a-time, streams 1 MB chunks. COPY FROM stdin blocks are handled inline.
• Schema diff — walks information_schema + pg_class; per-column type / NULL / default / PK / FK comparison.
• EXPLAIN tips — runs EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS, FORMAT JSON), parses the plan tree, surfaces issues (seq scans on big tables, missing indexes, sort spilling, nested-loop blowups). No AI.

Deep features (Pro tier)

• PG LISTEN/NOTIFY tail — subscribe to a channel from the Settings → Pro Plus → Pro tier panel; tail events live with their payloads + timestamps.
• Stored-proc trace — right-click any procedure → Trace. Wraps the call in EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS, FORMAT TEXT) CALL … so per-statement timing comes back. Pro Plus.

SSH tunneling

Built-in: connection edit modal has an “Add SSH tunnel” toggle. Supports key auth (~/.ssh/id_* or pasted), password, and ssh-agent (via the SSH_AUTH_SOCK env). 30-second keepalives + auto-reconnect on drop. See SSH tunnels.

Limits

Schema browser works fine on databases with tens of thousands of tables — the rail virtualizes. Past that, expect the initial fetch to lag (~1-2s for 50k tables); follow-up navigation is instant.

For very wide tables (>1k columns), the data grid shows the first 100 columns by default with a “show all” override — Postgres supports up to 1600 columns per table; loading them all into the DOM is slow but fine if you ask.