What is Mycli used for?

Mycli is a MySQL terminal client with context-aware autocompletion, syntax highlighting and dataframe support, also compatible with MariaDB, Percona and TiDB. It is a good fit for running ad hoc MySQL queries in the terminal, exploring MariaDB or TiDB schemas and quick data analysis with dataframe output.

Is Mycli open source?

Yes. Mycli is open source under the BSD-3-Clause licence. Its source code is on GitHub at dbcli/mycli and is written mainly in Python.

Yes. Mycli is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

What are some alternatives to Mycli?

Similar open-source tools in the Database Tools category include Pgcli, Harlequin and Beekeeper Studio. SaaS products in the same category include Querious, SQLyog and DBCode.

Is Mycli actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Mycli was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.27.0, published on 29 September 2026. The project has 12k stars on GitHub.

Mycli: open-source database tools

About Mycli

Mycli is an interactive command-line client for MySQL written in Python. It completes SQL keywords, tables, views, columns and more as you type, and its smart completion suggests only what makes sense in context, for example showing table names after a FROM clause and column names after WHERE.

It highlights syntax with Pygments, supports multiline queries, favorite queries with parameters, fuzzy history search with fzf, timing of statements and many output formats. Newer releases add Polars dataframe transforms and plots, Parquet saves, queries to LLMs with schema context via a /llm command, passwords stored in the system keyring, and integrations with SSH, Kubernetes, Vault and Boundary.

Mycli is compatible with MySQL, MariaDB, Percona, TiDB and Apache Doris, and has a sibling tool, pgcli, for Postgres. It is released under the BSD 3-Clause licence and installed with pip or system packages, or tried through uv or a container image. The README warns that release 2.0 contains breaking changes.

Key features

Context-aware SQL autocompletion
Syntax highlighting with Pygments
Fuzzy history search using fzf
Favorite queries with parameters
Polars dataframe transforms and plots
LLM queries using schema context
Passwords stored in system keyring

Good fit for

→Running ad hoc MySQL queries in the terminal
→Exploring MariaDB or TiDB schemas
→Quick data analysis with dataframe output

Built with: Python; MySQL
Tags: mysql; cli; autocompletion; syntax-highlighting; python; sql-client; terminal; mariadb

Mycli: questions and answers

What is Mycli used for?: Mycli is a MySQL terminal client with context-aware autocompletion, syntax highlighting and dataframe support, also compatible with MariaDB, Percona and TiDB. It is a good fit for running ad hoc MySQL queries in the terminal, exploring MariaDB or TiDB schemas and quick data analysis with dataframe output.
Is Mycli open source?: Yes. Mycli is open source under the BSD-3-Clause licence. Its source code is on GitHub at dbcli/mycli and is written mainly in Python.
Is Mycli free?: Yes. Mycli is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
What are some alternatives to Mycli?: Similar open-source tools in the Database Tools category include Pgcli, Harlequin and Beekeeper Studio. SaaS products in the same category include Querious, SQLyog and DBCode.
Is Mycli actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Mycli was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.27.0, published on 29 September 2026. The project has 12k stars on GitHub.