--- title: SQL Developer Reviews meta_title: 'SQL Developer Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 260 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how SQL Developer works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.3 review_count: 260 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-17' parent_category: name: Database Software url: https://www.g2.com/categories/database-software --- # SQL Developer Reviews **Vendor:** Oracle **Category:** [Database Management Systems (DBMS)](https://www.g2.com/categories/database-management-systems-dbms) **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 260 ## About SQL Developer Oracle SQL Developer is a free, integrated development environment (IDE) designed to simplify the development and management of Oracle Databases across both traditional and cloud deployments. It provides a comprehensive suite of tools for PL/SQL application development, database administration, data modeling, and migration from third-party databases to Oracle. With over 5 million users, SQL Developer enhances productivity by offering a user-friendly interface for tasks ranging from running queries and scripts to debugging and testing PL/SQL code. Key Features and Functionality: - PL/SQL IDE: A full-featured environment for writing, compiling, debugging, and testing PL/SQL applications. - Database Administration: Tools for managing database performance, security, storage, and configurations. - Data Modeling: Capabilities to create Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs), generate reports, and perform SQL and DDL scripting. - Migration Platform: Facilitates the migration of databases from platforms like Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase Adaptive Server, IBM DB2, MySQL, Microsoft Access, and Teradata to Oracle. - Multiple Interfaces: Offers desktop, browser-based (Database Actions), and command-line (SQLcl) interfaces to cater to diverse user preferences. Primary Value and User Solutions: Oracle SQL Developer addresses the complexities associated with database development and management by providing an all-encompassing toolset that streamlines workflows. It eliminates the need for multiple disparate tools by integrating essential functionalities into a single platform, thereby reducing development time and operational costs. Its support for various interfaces ensures flexibility, allowing users to choose the environment that best fits their needs. Additionally, the migration capabilities simplify the transition from other database systems to Oracle, facilitating a smoother integration process. ## SQL Developer Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **efficiency in handling database tasks** with SQL Developer, streamlining their workflow and reducing errors. (3 reviews) - Users find SQL Developer **intuitive and easy to navigate** , making complex database tasks feel simple and manageable. (2 reviews) - Users value the **analytics capabilities** of SQL Developer for providing clear insights and detecting fraud in data analysis. (1 reviews) - Users find it easy to handle **big data analysis** in SQL Developer, enabling effective risk and fraud detection. (1 reviews) - Users value the **thorough documentation** in SQL Developer, which aids in understanding and resolving issues effectively. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **easy integrations** in SQL Developer, finding it simplifies complex database management tasks. (1 reviews) - Learning (1 reviews) - Navigation Ease (1 reviews) - Speed (1 reviews) - Time Saving (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users experience **slow performance** with large queries or databases, leading to laggy interactions and a heavy system load. (2 reviews) - Users face significant **connection issues** that lead to prolonged wait times despite efficient query execution. (1 reviews) - Users find the **difficult learning** curve of SQL Developer impacts their ability to efficiently debug and test complex queries. (1 reviews) - Users find **function limitations** in SQL Developer, struggling with complex queries and inadequate support for advanced features. (1 reviews) - Users find SQL Developer can be **slow with big databases** , which may impact performance and user experience. (1 reviews) - Users find the **poor interface design** of SQL Developer to be laggy and less polished than modern tools. (1 reviews) - Small Business Limitations (1 reviews) ## SQL Developer Reviews ### 1. SQL Developer, adequate for all skill levels **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 12, 2023 **What do you like best about SQL Developer?** Although the interface is not very intuitive, usage is straightforward once you get a good feel for the UX. I consider myself nowadays to be an intermediate SQL user, but SQL Developer is one of the first SQL front ends I've used, and even as a novice user I was able to operate it adequately. **What do you dislike about SQL Developer?** Userface is not intuitive, and the program crashes a lot depending on the size and/or complexity of the data. **What problems is SQL Developer solving and how is that benefiting you?** SQL Developer provides access to a company's internal databases, and is capable of doing so without admin privileges. This means users outside departments that manage databases can access the data, meaning they can self-serve themselves to free up data request bandwidth by IT. ### 2. Good Tool. Does the Job. Prefer PLSQL Developer **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vipul J. | Product Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 02, 2016 **What do you like best about SQL Developer?** Has a nice export query result functionality which supports exporting results to csv, xls, as well as a loader script. Easy to use UI. Provides nice to have interface for accessing DBA objects if you have DBA privileges. Has easy integration with version control tools such as GIT and SVN. **What do you dislike about SQL Developer?** Not so stable and lags if the query is taking a long time to execute. Hangs if query execution is stopped before completion of a time-consuming query. Cannot keep the application window open for a longer time as the application will stop responding and you will have to restart the application. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Developer:** Free and comes with oracle installation. Has almost all the features which a Developer would need. Not fancy though. If you have a choice, go for Toad or PLSQL Developer. **What problems is SQL Developer solving and how is that benefiting you?** As I have worked in the Financial Domain, most of the business logic resided in the backend. Creating MIS daily and quarterly reports for a major financial institution is the main business goal for our project. SQL Developer has inbuilt features which help in performance tuning of the application. Provides explain plan window as well other query analyser features which are useful for performance tuning of the queries. ### 3. SQL Developer is usable but looks and feels like an application from 15 years ago **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Utilities | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 17, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Developer?** It's really easy to duplicate connection details; we have a lot of databases that follow similar patterns, and the ability to open one you already know is correct, change the details slightly and re-save is very convenient and means I don't spend a lot of time trying to find some small typo. **What do you dislike about SQL Developer?** The user interface isn't very intuitive, and I often have to hover over buttons to figure out what they're supposed to do. I tend to stick to only a few of them because I don't always know what kind of side-effects will take place if I click the wrong thing. It also uses more RAM and CPU than I would expect since most of the heavy lifting should be taking place in the database itself. **What problems is SQL Developer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Solving problems with unexpected data is much easier to do when you're viewing and editing with SQL Developer as opposed to the Java applications that we ultimately use our databases with. ### 4. nice product but memory management needs improvement **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nilesh J. | Programmer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 16, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Developer?** Portable and free of charge Portable and free of charge **What do you dislike about SQL Developer?** Memory consumuption is very poor frequent crashes **What problems is SQL Developer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Debugging ### 5. SQL Developer Review **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 17, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Developer?** The features to see the insights of the DBs & queries. **What do you dislike about SQL Developer?** The UI & usability needs to get improved **Recommendations to others considering SQL Developer:** Good tool **What problems is SQL Developer solving and how is that benefiting you?** To see the data that's stored with my app, modify them and run reports on them ### 6. SQL Developer - Easy to use. **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 07, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Developer?** Great tool to run SQL statements and scripts. you can get the data without any sql script in data tab and update if required. It can handle large amount of data like oracle. you can create data models diagram very easily with this tool. **What do you dislike about SQL Developer?** Oracle can improve the user experience. also can provide script generator from data like SQL DBx. **What problems is SQL Developer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Executed queries and spocs. Easy to use. ### 7. SQL Developer **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Machinery | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 23, 2018 **What do you like best about SQL Developer?** Ability to quickly establish a connection to the database to test connectivity. Ability to call sql developer from linux to troubleshoot issues. **What do you dislike about SQL Developer?** The interface is not very user friendly. Would be nice to be able to select the database being connected to from a list of values instead of having to type it. **What problems is SQL Developer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Connectivity problems related to third party integration tools. It is easiest to test connections with sql developer. ### 8. sql developer review from development perspective **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** sandeep n. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 22, 2018 **What do you like best about SQL Developer?** sql developer works well with ORDS as well **What do you dislike about SQL Developer?** sql eveloper is fat client and has download client on desktop **What problems is SQL Developer solving and how is that benefiting you?** use multiple database connection and can work well with other database ### 9. Good experience with some fallbacks **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Telecommunications | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 19, 2018 **What do you like best about SQL Developer?** I like the integracion that it have (full) with Oracle product. I has plenty of functionalities for beginners and pros, if you like to go a little more further i recommend other tool like Toad. **What do you dislike about SQL Developer?** I dislike the incompatibilities between SQL Developer and (Java Version + Windows Version) that causes glitches on the gui. If you have some luck its a problem that will never reach you, but sometimes you need to change JDK used o touch some configuration to have it working properly (mainly on the gui) **What problems is SQL Developer solving and how is that benefiting you?** We heavily use Oracle database, with SQL Developers our Software Engineers connect to DBRMS. ### 10. Restart the product again **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Víctor B. | Presales Manager / Service Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 12, 2017 **What do you like best about SQL Developer?** Access to any number of Oracle databases **What do you dislike about SQL Developer?** It is always necessary to restart the application since it uses to lose the active connection **What problems is SQL Developer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Database modeling and mainteinance ### 11. Good basic program **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Isa D. | Web Administrator / Registrar, Primary/Secondary Education, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2016 **What do you like best about SQL Developer?** Easy to use. With this program you are up and running in no time. I love the feature that lets you store queries so you can pull them up later and run again. **What do you dislike about SQL Developer?** It seems inconvenient that you need to use another program to connect to the database before you can run SQL Developer. If I lose connection and the other program has to be reconnected, then SQL Developer will sometimes freeze. Then I'll have to restart and lose whatever query I am in the middle of building. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Developer:** SQL Developer will get you up and running fairly quickly. Good interface for writing queries that can be stored for later use. Works well with Oracle. **What problems is SQL Developer solving and how is that benefiting you?** I mainly use SQL Developer to query data from PowerSchool. When multiple tables are involved, pulling data is often easier and/or quicker with SQL Developer than with PowerSchool's build-in features. ### 12. Useful but needs improvements **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rubén S. | Senior software engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2016 **What do you like best about SQL Developer?** This application is very easy to use. You can add many connections and browse different schemas easily. The SQL completion works very well and it has additional features like database comparison or database copying. **What do you dislike about SQL Developer?** The application has some performance issues, if you keep the application open but idle for some time it becomes unresponsive (at least the linux version). **What problems is SQL Developer solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm web application developer and I use it for DB schema creation and manipulation, as well as data checking. ### 13. A decent basic SQL editor **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sean S. | Oracle Database Administrator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 04, 2016 **What do you like best about SQL Developer?** SQL Developer is a simple interface for basic coding and it has a robust set of customizations available, as well as integration with version control tools like git and SVN. **What do you dislike about SQL Developer?** As a OS X user, I find that there are a fair number of features that just don't work, or only work with extensive manual modifications to the code base. I'd prefer a tool that worked reliably out of the box. For example, if you want to use the "Reset password" feature you have to install the separate Instant Client, then go in and edit the launcher tool to set paths correctly for Darwin. Simply put, if the tool is available for a popular OS, features should be tested and working or made unavailable until they are. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Developer:** It may be worthwhile to evaluate alternative tools if you're looking for something to do more than basic database queries. **What problems is SQL Developer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Sometimes a GUI is nice. We have a lot of non-database developers that use SQL*Developer as a means of connecting easily with the database, which simplifies their lives. ### 14. It is powerful but a little user unfriendly. **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ryan Z. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 29, 2015 **What do you like best about SQL Developer?** The power of being able to sift through huge amounts of data, quickly. **What do you dislike about SQL Developer?** It's tough to tell where mistakes are. I also wish all SQL softwares contained the same language syntax. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Developer:** Make all SQL softwares consistent. **What problems is SQL Developer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Usually synthesizing data. Makes this quick and efficient. ## SQL Developer Discussions - [Do you plan to develop multi-filter features (ie creating multiple filters, and using them when it is needed)?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/47152-do-you-plan-to-develop-multi-filter-features-ie-creating-multiple-filters-and-using-them-when-it-is-needed) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [What is SQL Developer used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-sql-developer-used-for) - 1 comment - [What is the use of SQL Developer?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-the-use-of-sql-developer) - 1 comment - [View SQL Developer pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/sql-developer/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=3§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-20+21%3A05%3A20+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=b3774a1e-3e69-41c4-96f5-69c0b7d00947&secure%5Btoken%5D=eb59a3fb23f97015db64e1b765534e720533945b2c91c16e62eed6dfc4affbe7&format=llm_user) ## SQL Developer Integrations - [Visual Studio Code](https://www.g2.com/products/visual-studio-code/reviews) ## SQL Developer Features **Management** - Data dictionary - Data Replication - Query Language - Data Modeling - Performance Analysis **Maintenance** - Data Migration - Backup and Recovery - Multi-User Environment **Security** - Data Encryption - User Access Control ## Top SQL Developer Alternatives - [Toad For Oracle](https://www.g2.com/products/quest-software-toad-for-oracle/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (281 reviews) - [DbVisualizer](https://www.g2.com/products/dbvisualizer/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (263 reviews) - [phpMyAdmin](https://www.g2.com/products/phpmyadmin/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (167 reviews)