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Top 5 Free Database Diagram Design Tools

A database schema is the blueprints of your database, it represents the description of a database structure, data types, and the constraints on the database. And designing database schemas is one of the very first and important steps to start developing any software/website.

To help you determine the right tool for you to design database schema diagrams, we've curated a list of 5 of the best free online tools to do it.

dbdiagram.io

Pricing: Free for up to 10 diagrams. After that, it's $9/month.

dbdiagram.io is a quick and simple database designer to help you draw your database diagrams using their own Domain-specific language (DSL).
Designed for developers, DBA and data analysts.
They have a simple language to define, you can easily edit/copy without leaving the keyboard.
They focus exclusively on drawing database relationship diagrams.
Allow you to save and share your diagrams online.
Their UI looks simple and neat, with pretty diagrams.

Diagrams.net (formerly Draw.io)

Pricing: Free for web-based usage, paid for Atlassian (Confluence/JIRA) apps.

Diagrams.net (formerly Draw.io) is a free online diagram software for making flowcharts, process diagrams, etc.
Allows different types of charts like flowcharts, org charts, UML, ER and network diagrams.
Allows saving your diagrams to cloud storage services like GDrive, Dropbox and OneDrive, or to your own computer
Visual interfaces are not as nice as Lucidchart.

Lucidchart

Pricing: Free with limited objects, $4.95-$9.00/user/month

Lucidchart is cloud-based and collaborative diagram software. Lucidchart helps your team create not only database diagram but also flowcharts, process maps, UML models, org charts,.. on any device across the platform you already use.
Free plan comes with a limit of 3 diagrams and 60 objects per diagram
Good experience and collaborative
Integrated with G Suite, Microsoft Office...
Good if you are more of a designer and want drag-and-drop interface

QuickDBD

Pricing: free for 1 public diagram and 10 tables, plans at $14/month for unlimited tables and private diagrams.

QuickDBD helps you quickly draw a diagram using just text input.
It quickly captures ideas, and you can draw schema diagrams using only the keyboard.
Support exporting to SQL, PDF and Word

ERD Plus

Pricing: free

ERD Plus is a basic database modeling tool for creating Entity Relationship Diagrams, Relational Schemas, Star Schemas, and SQL DDL statements.
Automatically convert ER Diagrams into Relational Schemas
Export SQL
Export diagrams as a PNG
Save diagrams safely on our server

Conclusion

If you're a developer, DBA or data analyst that prefers to write code, go for dbdiagram.io or QuickDBD.

If you prefer GUI, go for Diagrams.net or Lucidchart.

What's next?

After you've designed your database schemas, it's time to use a BI tool like Holistics.io to turn your data into insights automatically.

Holistics is a self-service BI platform that allows non-technical users to create their own charts without writing SQL or going to the data team. Data teams save time as they just have to define the data models once and they can use it everywhere, without writing the same SQL queries again and again.

And Holistics has an in-built relationship diagram that helps you map relationships between tables and models. Start a free 14-day with Holistics now! No credit card required.