Chat with your database in plain English — locally, for free

DB-GPT is an open-source framework that allows users to query databases using plain English, automatically translating natural language questions into SQL and executing them locally without requiring SQL knowledge. It supports multiple database systems including PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, and others, and can visualize results as charts. The tool is fully self-hosted, MIT licensed, and has garnered over 17,000 GitHub stars.

"What were our top 10 customers last quarter by revenue, as a bar chart?" DB-GPT translates that to SQL, runs it against your database, and renders the chart. No SQL knowledge required. Fully local. MIT licensed. 17K GitHub stars — almost no English content. DB-GPT is an open-source framework that puts a natural language interface on top of your databases. You connect PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, or others — then ask questions in plain English. It generates the SQL, executes it, and can visualize results automatically. Think Metabase meets AI, but fully self-hosted and free. PostgreSQL · MySQL · MariaDB · SQLite · ClickHouse · DuckDB · Spark SQL Clone the repo, copy .env.example to .env , add your database connection string, then docker compose up -d . Open localhost:5670 → admin / admin → Settings → Database → Add → paste connection string. Full docker-compose: chinese-ai-tools-english-guide/tools/db-gpt Once your database is connected: DB-GPT generates SQL for each, runs it, returns results. Charts render automatically in the UI. Settings → LLM Provider → Ollama → Base URL: http://ollama:11434/v1 → Model: llama3 For best SQL accuracy use sqlcoder — fine-tuned specifically for SQL generation. Pull it with docker exec -it ollama ollama pull sqlcoder . Both let you query databases with natural language: DB-GPT if you want a complete self-contained app. Vanna.ai if you're embedding the capability programmatically into your own product. A ready-to-import workflow JSON is in the repo integration/n8n-workflows/db-gpt-query.json . POST {question, db name} → returns {answer, sql, data} . → chinese-ai-tools-english-guide Previous articles in this series: Your data never leaves your machine. No API keys, no cloud, no SQL knowledge needed.