Hello Readers! “The Monday Elephant” is a weekly PostgreSQL blog post series that brings you tips, tricks and tools to help you be more productive with PostgreSQL database administration.

Looking for a simple, lightweight, open-source database explorer tool? Checkout pgweb.

pgweb is a Go app that provides a web-based interface to view your table structure, list rows and run SQL queries. It can connect to PostgreSQL servers over SSH tunnels too.

To start using it, simply get the precompiled binary and run it on your local machine:

% wget https://github.com/sosedoff/pgweb/releases/download/v0.17.0/pgweb_darwin_arm64.zip
% unzip pgweb_darwin_arm64.zip
% ./pgweb_darwin_arm64 
Pgweb v0.17.0 (git: 6b0b0244) (go: go1.24.3) (build time: 2025-11-22T15:25:19Z) (arch: darwin/arm64)
Connecting to server...
Connected to PostgreSQL 17.9
Checking database objects...
Starting server...
To view database open http://localhost:8081/ in browser
[...]

In this case, pgweb connected to a local database using default credentials (just like starting psql without any arguments). If not, browsing to http://localhost:8081/ will show you a connection page:

pgweb Connect UI

After entering the credentials, you can browse your database tables, views, functions and other objects. You can also see the indexes and constraints of a table, list out the rows and so on:

pgweb UI

You can also of course run SQL queries and see the results in a nice tabular format:

pgweb SQL Query

pgweb is easy to run and use, and is a great tool for quickly exploring your PostgreSQL database. Learn more about it with the links below:

pgweb home page: https://sosedoff.github.io/pgweb/

pgweb GitHub: https://github.com/sosedoff/pgweb

About pgDash

pgDash is a modern, in-depth monitoring solution designed specifically for PostgreSQL deployments. pgDash shows you information and metrics about every aspect of your PostgreSQL database server, collected using the open-source tool pgmetrics.

pgDash Queries Dashboard

pgDash provides core reporting and visualization functionality, including collecting and displaying PostgreSQL information and providing time-series graphs, detailed reports, diagnostics, alerting, teams and more. Checkout the features here or signup today for a free trial.