The honest table.
What each one costs, and what each one can actually do. Schema tools love limits — one diagram here, ten tables there, version history behind a paywall — so we read their pricing pages and opened their apps, and you don’t have to.
| feature | hellodb | dbdiagram(opens in a new tab) | drawSQL(opens in a new tab) | ChartDB(opens in a new tab) | QuickDBD(opens in a new tab) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs | |||||
| What it costs to use today | ✓nothing, for one person | ✕Pro from $8/mo | ✕from $19/mo | ✕from $25/mo | ✕from $14/mo |
| What the free tier really allows | ✓everything, unlimited | ◐10 diagrams · public only | ◐public only · 15 tables | ◐1 database · 10 tables | ◐1 public diagram · 10 tables |
| Use it without signing up | ✓the whole product | ◐saving needs an account | ◐capped at 20 tables | ✓playground | ✓ |
| What it can do | |||||
| Agent-operable over MCP | ✓skill included · layout survives | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Mongo nested documents | ✓recursive, editable | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Version history on free | ✓named, restorable | ✕paid feature | ✕paid feature | ✕Teams, $59/mo | ✕no tier has it |
| Live multiplayer editing | ✓free · no seat count | ✕Personal Pro and up | ✕Growth, $59/mo | ✕Teams, $59/mo | ✓ |
| SVG export on free | ✓true vectors | ✓ | ✕paid plans only | ✓ | ✓ |
| What it looks like click to enlarge |
-- verified on each product’s live site, 2026-08-24; multiplayer plans re-checked 2026-08-27. Free tiers as published on their pricing pages.
-- thinking Lucidchart? Its free plan is 3 documents at 75 shapes each — a schema-sized schema won’t fit.
You design a schema in three passes. So it has three views.
Every other tool draws one diagram and leaves you to squint past the columns you are not thinking about. This one draws the amount you need right now, and re-packs the layout every time you switch — so nothing overlaps and nothing needs tidying by hand.
One table is touching everything. Hide its relations.
In this ride-hailing schema `user` is an endpoint of 7 of the 8 relations — riders, drivers, referrals and both sides of every rating all point back at it. Nothing is wrong with the model; it is just drowning out the structure you were trying to read.
See what changed, on the diagram itself.
Schema history usually means a wall of migration files and a guess about what they did to the shape of things. Name a save point, pick any two, and the canvas draws the answer.
The canvas is already open.
Just draw — or tell your agent to. No account, no card.
-- signing up takes 0 seconds. there isn't one.