September 26, 2024: PostgreSQL 17 Released!
Supported Versions: Current (17) / 16 / 15 / 14 / 13 / 12
Development Versions: devel
Unsupported versions: 11 / 10 / 9.6 / 9.5 / 9.4 / 9.3 / 9.2 / 9.1 / 9.0 / 8.4 / 8.3 / 8.2 / 8.1 / 8.0 / 7.4 / 7.3 / 7.2 / 7.1

PostgreSQL Client Applications


This part contains reference information for PostgreSQL client applications and utilities. Not all of these commands are of general utility; some might require special privileges. The common feature of these applications is that they can be run on any host, independent of where the database server resides.

When specified on the command line, user and database names have their case preserved — the presence of spaces or special characters might require quoting. Table names and other identifiers do not have their case preserved, except where documented, and might require quoting.

Table of Contents

clusterdb — cluster a PostgreSQL database
createdb — create a new PostgreSQL database
createuser — define a new PostgreSQL user account
dropdb — remove a PostgreSQL database
dropuser — remove a PostgreSQL user account
ecpg — embedded SQL C preprocessor
pg_basebackup — take a base backup of a PostgreSQL cluster
pgbench — run a benchmark test on PostgreSQL
pg_config — retrieve information about the installed version of PostgreSQL
pg_dump — extract a PostgreSQL database into a script file or other archive file
pg_dumpall — extract a PostgreSQL database cluster into a script file
pg_isready — check the connection status of a PostgreSQL server
pg_receivewal — stream write-ahead logs from a PostgreSQL server
pg_recvlogical — control PostgreSQL logical decoding streams
pg_restore — restore a PostgreSQL database from an archive file created by pg_dump
pg_verifybackup — verify the integrity of a base backup of a PostgreSQL cluster
psql PostgreSQL interactive terminal
reindexdb — reindex a PostgreSQL database
vacuumdb — garbage-collect and analyze a PostgreSQL database

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