# SQL Compare Reviews **Vendor:** Redgate Software **Category:** [Database Comparison Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/database-comparison) **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 28 ## About SQL Compare Redgate creates ingeniously simple software to help data professionals get the most value out of any database, anywhere, through the provision of end-to-end Database DevOps. More than 200,000 people globally, including 92% of the Fortune 100, trust Redgate to deliver ingeniously simple software. SQL Compare is the industry standard for comparing and deploying SQL Server database schemas quickly and accurately. 71% of the Fortune 100 use SQL Compare to compare SQL Server databases – because it's relentlessly tested, easy to use, creates flawless deployment scripts, and saves time. Whether you need to deploy changes or explore the differences between two SQL Server databases, SQL Compare is the fastest way to compare and deploy SQL Server schemas. It enables yo to find and fix errors, and create deployment scripts in minutes. Find out more about SQL Compare: https://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-compare/ ## SQL Compare Reviews ### 1. Red Gate Compare fails with a spurious error **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Wholesale | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 06, 2025 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** Its great when it works. But it's useless when it doesn't. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** The product fails to compare two SQL databases and returns a vague error message. Red Gate Support requested copies of the database schemas, but due to policy, they cannot be shared offsite. Unfortunately, they are unwilling to extend their logging to help diagnose the issue. Having used Red Gate tools for over 10 years, I can say that their support was excellent in the past, but that is no longer the case. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** detecting changes between 2 production databases. ### 2. SQL Compare, best tool out there! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Matthew S. | Network Operator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 26, 2024 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** Easy to compare objects between databases, compare procs, tables, triggers or permissions and sync them up easily. Used regularly to promote changes to production or check where code was changed. Or to recreate a like database with the same structure but with out the data and triggers. Highly recommend using SQL compare to make your life easier! **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** Lines not lining up make it appear there is more differences then there are, it can be determined that what it is dropping it is also adding due to order etc but it can add to time for review **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Code promotion, tracking down discrepancies, easy object snapshot comparison to what is live ### 3. First Foray into Redgate **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Cyndi D. | IT Senior Business Analyst, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 13, 2024 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** Ease of use. Ease of installation. Fills my needs. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** Only downside I can think of is that I need to use it at all! **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** SQL Compare has been critical to my work where we integrate in-house developed apps to a program without an API. Without it, I couldn't verify updates to the program wouldn't break our apps. I have been able to prevent several issues dut to using it. It is fairly simple to read and interpret. ### 4. I use it daily **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Health, Wellness and Fitness | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 18, 2024 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** SQL Compare is fast and effective at identifying changes or differences in database structures/DDL. It is also flexible in the things that can be included or excluded from comparisons. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** I'd like the ability to compare versions of the same objects within the same db or objects with different names in different databases. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** It speeds up change management between development, test and production environments. ### 5. Exceptional product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Robert R. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 08, 2024 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** I does what is says it does, allows me to compare revisions of databases **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** so far nothing and i have been using the product for over 10 years **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I do development on seperate computer that the main server. When i am ready to upgrade the server, the product gives me a path to do so. I will ususally replicate the server database first the do the comparison with both this tool and the data Compare tool. The later allows be to sync data between both databases ### 6. A tool that every DBA or DB developer need to have **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Gambling & Casinos | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 14, 2024 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** Compare databases before upgrade and generate the upgrade script. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** As a tool for comparing database schema, it have everything that I am looking for. It give every single option to ignore or include. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Finding the schema difference and generate the script change. ### 7. Purpose Driven Done Right **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Logistics and Supply Chain | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 13, 2021 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** The interface is easy to use, but it consistently builds out the SQL scripts based upon a wide variety of granular options. It also interfaces with powershell so you can execute the plug-in with those options selected. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** The scripts are not referential aware. It can not handle generating a single script that requires a specific order, such as adding a table before adding new tables that reference it. Also, not all of the options are accessibly via powershell. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Compare:** Keep in mind the functionality still requires some fine-tuning in complex systems, such as RMDBs with foreign key relationships. The license is also quite expensive, but I find it's worth the price. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** This created a great way to maintain our codebase in a way that does not require a DBA on hand to generate the SQL change scripts. We use this as the key piece in applying source control to all databases in our application. ### 8. Handy but slightly tedious **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 13, 2020 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** most helpful feature about redgate SQL compare tool is that its enables to be compare different tables and datasets across multiple databases and saves a lot of time to figure out differences and discrepancies. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** downside of using the redgate sql compare tool is that there is a learning curve to be able to understand how to effectively use this tool and is not very intuitive. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Compare:** It is worth understanding and learning how to use this tool as it saves a ton of time over time and saves erroneous data comparisons once you put in the time and effort to learn to use this tool. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use this tool every now and then to compare huge datasets in tables across multiple databases within the same environments as well as across test and production environment to sync the data across all servers and databases. This saves a lot of time as it would be very painful to do this manually without the use of this tool and also allows room for user error otherwise. ### 9. Best SQL Comparison Tool I ever tried **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ivan M. | Information System Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 30, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** It's super fast, accurate, and simple. Saved hours of development using it! **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** Price is a bit expensive, it should be an option for small business **Recommendations to others considering SQL Compare:** Try it! **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have a tenant database architecture, and RedGate helps me to compare and share configuration info between all of them. ### 10. Its more likely to suit you and your team. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 29, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** Redgate approach to filtering is generally easier to manage. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** Redgate scripts do not support SQLCMD variable syntax. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Compare:** Just use it if you want model based source control solution. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I had a team of 12 members, Sometimes its too heavy load on us to compare huge database objects, this problem is solved with Redgate ### 11. Indispensable **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 07, 2018 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** Wonderful software for keeping the schema of your databases in sync. I could not do without. I tried but my databases got out of sync very soon. I love generating the scripts from SQL Compare and then uploading them on the live machines and deploying them. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** It could do without bugs. Some bugs when you save change scripts, but nothing deal-breaking. Also, would be nice to have sequential naming for the files - I have to manage the naming myself. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Compare:** You should really get Data Compare too. They work together. And also Source Control. In fact, you should get the SQL Toolbox if you can afford it. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Keeping my database schemas in sync across servers - development, staging and live. I need to maintain about 50 websites, internationally, and they all use the same database schema. Keeping this up to date across platforms would be a pain. ### 12. great way to compare databases **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 15, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** seeing whats different about different databases easily **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** that you need to have premium package in order to compare to github repository even though i paid for sql source control from same company **Recommendations to others considering SQL Compare:** allow github compare to basic package **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** ability to roll out sql changes to live and staging databases ### 13. Best one of comparison tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Joe C. | Lead Database Administrator, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 27, 2017 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** The variation from point and shoot comparisons with all of the default options to getting very specific with filtering. Often times it is very useful to be ale to remove items such as user permissions but if that is what needs comparing, then the granularity is great **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** Little bit clunky to use as a tool for a many to many scenario where you don’t have a known good baseline to work from. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Despite having a fairly rigid deployment pipeline, we still find drift in the schema across our application DBs and for fine grained detail, this is the best tool we have found. ### 14. Excellent tool for Data comparision **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 31, 2018 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** This is the best tool in industry that I've came across till date, as it makes life simpler in many complex situations. RedGate is very easy to use, easy to compare the data between two Databases, even at table level and the best part is that it even generates scripts for the data difference found, so that Data can be synchronized just by running those scripts. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** Nothing that I dislike regarding this tool, except that the license cost is little high which I personally felt. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Compare:** I would recommend 10/10 **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is mainly used in situations where data is corrupted or deleted, or when replication has issues and when a snapshot cannot be applied, data can be compared with RedGate, and the difference can be synchronized with the Scripts generated, hence eliminating the need for Snapshot application. This helps especially when the Publication Database/Tables are huge. ### 15. Great tool to compare and deploy database scripts **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mohit S. | Senior Software Engineer Technical Lead, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2018 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** It does a great job of comparing database difference and generating a visual report of the same. You can then generate a script of the changes. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** It does not work seamlessly with DLM automation as a part of the SQL toolbelt. The errors are not intuitive when working on DLM, and it need DBO access to the database, not just read/write. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Generating automated script for SQL database deployments. ### 16. Great Comparison Tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 30, 2018 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** Easy to use interface and returns reliable search results **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** Can take a while to load up when first using **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Used to compare Stored Procedures on multiple instances to sync code across the servers. ### 17. Handy tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 05, 2018 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** A simple GUI to compare data between two environments was very cool and useful **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** The interface could be better but otherwise no major complaints **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use it to compare data between different environments and for syncing up test data between environments ### 18. Saving time on dB migrations **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2018 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** Ease of use, scripting possibilities, multiple. Type of sources: live dB, backups, source control... **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** The output of all the data discrepancies is not that trivial in its interpretation; would I do better? Hardly. :/ **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Database migration in mimures ### 19. Excellent tool for comparing databases **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Barbara R. | President/Co-Founder, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 18, 2017 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** It's a really powerful tool. I have used it for about 6 years SQL Compare and SQL Data compare. I've used with SQL server 2005, 2008, and now with SQL server 2012. It has a useful object filter for the role, stored procedures, functions, tables, etc..., find function and the deployment wizard, that bring you out the script to upgrade/etc your target database/tables/etc. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** Sometimes the script is messy and you need to examine it before you deploy. Also, it doesn't alway catch if there is are key constraints. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Compare:** Would also recommend SQL Diff and SQL Data Compre **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is a great tool for moving from development to production. ### 20. Industry Leading Software **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 13, 2017 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** Very easy to compare similar databases and find differences between records. It seems like almost very scenario is covered. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** I can not think of anything that I dislike about this software. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We provide a software platform that utilizes a single tenant database architecture. This software is imperative to keep us running efficiently. ### 21. Great Product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2017 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** Best available product for this purpose. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** Nothing to dislike. Always welcome and excited for updates and new features. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Comparing SQL objects. ### 22. Good tool for database conversions **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 07, 2017 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** Intuitive interface which walks you through table selection and deployment options. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** The tool could use better error-handling, especially when a SQL script throws an error and the results include the entire deployment results up to the point of the error. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use the tool to quickly bring forward common tables for new iterations of older databases. ### 23. SQL compare is not a Clear Winner in Few Areas **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hardik C. | Senior Software Development Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 04, 2016 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** Installation was fairly quick and easy.When I first launched SQL Compare 9.0, I was presented with a dialog box that was intuitive and simple to use. I was able to immediately start comparing databases, with no steep learning curve to overcome. The results of the comparison seemed straightforward and easy to understand at first **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** As I got further into the process, I had difficulty figuring out how to perform certain actions. One problem I had was getting past the errors for the full-text indexes. Full-text indexes weren’t listed in the object list in the output. I removed full-text catalogs from the output via the filters, but this had no effect on the output. I eventually figured out that you can select to ignore full-text indexes as a project option and that there’s no other way to remove full-text indexes from the results. Changing the project options means rerunning the comparison to get a new set of results. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Compare:** Red Gate's SQL Compare is a product I have used for years and I love the latest version. Data and Schema Compare tools are very expensive!There are much cheaper alternative, But I am thinking in the short term the purchase would hurt but in the long term it would more than pay for itself in lots of ways. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** the RegGate tool set is so useful for us as we run our operation on large set of clients with their all four environments Dev, Test, Stage, Live should be always in sync in order to work.. so with compare schema and Data tools from red gate we create the synchronization scripts along with the comparison of actual data streams as well. ### 24. Great Tool for Database Comparison **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 03, 2016 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** I love the SQL Search feature. When working with large databases it can be hard to keep track of objects when multiple changes are being made by multiple users. The SQL Search Feature lets you search for a column name for example and will show you every instance of where that column name occurs in the database. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** So far the product has been meeting my needs and I cant quite pinpoint anything at this point that I do not like as the tasks I have had to complete have been quite simple and I have been able to do them with ease. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Compare:** A very handy tool for managing migrations. I would recommend using the SQL Compare if you have seperate development, test and production environments. It will make moving data object quite easy **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** When moving data from a testing to a production environment, the SQL Compare lets you ensure consistency between versions and manages the script creation for that process in a very easy to use manner. It saves the DBA having to write alot of extra code. ### 25. Great software for database diff **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Maurizio M. | IT Manager, Database Department, Gambling & Casinos, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2016 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** It's a really powerful tool. We used since 7 years SQL Compare and SQL Data compare. We've used with sql server 2005, 2008, and now with sql server 2012. It's useful the object filter (choose only, for example, role, stored procedures, functions, tables, etc...), great the find function and the deployment wizard, that bring you out the script to upgrade/etc your target database/tables/etc. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** sometimes the script it's a little bit messy, but you can fix it in an easy way by setting the options (also for the project). sometimes you could get an error if you have some linked server in your stored procedures or function or some transaction, there are hints about that on the web (setting up transaction isolation level read uncommitted, and so on...) **Recommendations to others considering SQL Compare:** buy also SQL DataDiff, it's a great tool for database management. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** it simplify and make really fast our deploy on systems other than development. make a diff between server and..that's it, you've the script. of course we have to be careful about that (ALWAYS check and look at the script) ### 26. Really useful to save your time **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Luca C. | Online Platform & Integrations DBA Senior Supervisor, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2016 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** Ease of use, immediate result. I use this software everyday, with this you can compare different tables, storeds and SQL objects, discovering easily the differences and findout an immediate solution regarding the alignment of SQL servers. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** The only hassle is having to buy a new license if you are comparing SQL Server environments more updated than the one used. For example, if you have the version of 2008 you can not compare a table SQL Server 2008 with another table SQL Server 2012. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Compare:** Weigh carefully which version to buy depending on the version of SqlServer you are using **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I do not waste time searching independently any sql difference between different environments, most of the porting to production environments are scripted directly from SQL Compare. ### 27. Best tool I've ever used to keep databases in sync **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 14, 2016 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** I love how easy it is to use to find differences between databases. The ability to create scripts to update one database to another is great. There are so many options to choose - whether to sync everything, just table differences, procs, views, etc. The "ignore" list makes it simple to determine what you want to include in the compare. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** I haven't found anything I particularly dislike. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Compare:** If you have the need to maintain multiple like databases or need to keep development and production databases in sync, this is the tool for you. Being able to compare databases, backups, snapshots, source control, etc. is critical and so easy with SQL Compare. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a developer of versioned software, I need to be able to track changes we make to our deliverable databases. SQL Compare allows me to easily compare the current development database to production databases to identify and script the necessary changes to bring it to the same level as the development database. SQL Compare has saved my company so much money in saved development hours, and significantly reduced the number of errors encountered while creating deliverable database schemas. ### 28. Sql Compare - Really speeds up deployment **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** McCourt C. | Systems Development Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 26, 2016 **What do you like best about SQL Compare?** The schema compare wizard is really something special. **What do you dislike about SQL Compare?** The cost is a little prohibitive for sole developers. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Compare:** If you are part of a larger organisation then definetly make the case to buy this from your Management. **What problems is SQL Compare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are activly using the product to replicate schema's acros multiple sites and client. - [View SQL Compare pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/sql-compare/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-01+03%3A45%3A08+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=79656f79-c5d5-4e4d-b1ac-91500edc8609&secure%5Btoken%5D=1f3a00db983488b3d307a46b3cfabd781dbf96d8140ac75f272370bc8c14b3f9&format=llm_user) ## SQL Compare Features **Functionality** - Schema Comparison - Data Comparison - Database Export **Management** - Database Synchronization - Reporting - Selective Synchronization ## Top SQL Compare Alternatives - [Liquibase](https://www.g2.com/products/liquibase/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (28 reviews) - [dbForge Studio for MySQL](https://www.g2.com/products/dbforge-studio-for-mysql-2018-12-04/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (98 reviews) - [Beyond Compare](https://www.g2.com/products/beyond-compare/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (150 reviews)