Skip to content

Connect a MySQL GUI to PlanetScale

Connect to your PlanetScale database using any MySQL GUI application

Introduction

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to connect to a PlanetScale database using a MySQL GUI. While this tutorial uses Sequel Ace as a demonstration, many applications that connect to MySQL databases will support connecting to and querying a PlanetScale database as long as the applicaton supports connecting over SSL.

Gather the credentials

To connect to a PlanetScale database, you'll need four pieces of information:

  • The database name
  • Host name
  • Username
  • Password

The easiest way to gather this information is by accessing the branch of the database you wish to connect to and selecting the "Connect" button from the "Overview" tab.

Open the Connect modal.

In the Connect modal, select "General" under the Connect with options. This will display the connection details as a list instead of a language or framework-specific connection string.

The Connect modal.

Note

As a security best practice, passwords are only displayed when they are created. If you do not know the password, you may generate a new credential set by clicking the "New password" button in the Connect modal.

Connect to the database

In the application you are using, enter the access information you gathered in the previous step into the appropriate fields. Make sure to check "Require SSL" as SSL is required to connect to a PlanetScale database. Click "Connect" once you are finished.

The new connection window in Sequel Ace.

If the connection is successful, you should be able to query your database and perform other supported operations.

A sample query in Sequel Ace.

Caveats

While many standard MySQL statements are supported, there are a few caveats worth calling out:

  1. Each branch of a PlanetScale database is considered an isolated MySQL database. You'll need separate connection details per branch.
  2. Production branches with safe migrations enforce the use of branching and deploy requests to safely make schema changes and do not support direct DDL as a result. However, DDL is supported on development branches and production branches without safe migrations enabled (not recommended).
  3. Creating new databases is not supported using any GUI tool.

Tested GUIs

The following MySQL GUI applications have been tested and confirmed to work with PlanetScale databases:

Need help?

Get help from the PlanetScale support team, or join our GitHub discussion board to see how others are using PlanetScale.

Was this page useful?
Last updated on Help us improve this page