Choosing A SQL AI Tool: What Actually Differentiates Them

The five questions worth asking

Ask these of any tool in this category, including this one. Each is architectural — a vendor either built it in or cannot add it later without a rewrite, which is why they predict week-three experience better than any feature list.

• Does it read your live schema? Keys, types, distinct values and statistics — or just table and column names? This decides correctness on any non-trivial database.
• Does it execute? A tool that returns a query and stops has made you the test suite. One that runs it read-only can catch its own bad join.
• How is read-only enforced? A parser validating to a single SELECT is a guarantee. A prompt asking the model not to write is not.
• Where do your credentials live? On your machine, or in a web app's database? This is the question with the longest tail.
• Can it run with no network? If not, "private" means "we promise", and there are environments where a promise is not admissible.

Hosted web app versus local application

Most tools in this space are web apps you paste a connection string into, which means your credentials and your schema live on a third party's infrastructure and your database has to accept connections from theirs. That is a real trade for real convenience — nothing to install, works from anywhere. The cost is that privacy becomes a policy question rather than an architectural fact, and in a regulated environment the difference is the entire procurement conversation.

Where SQLore lands

It is a desktop application. It introspects the live catalog and caches keys, types, distinct values and statistics; it executes read-only and self-corrects; every generated statement is parsed to an AST and validated to a single SELECT; credentials never leave the machine; and with a local model configured it runs with no network access at all. The trade we made is the mirror of the hosted one — there is something to install, and it runs where you install it.

The claims to discount

Accuracy percentages quoted against public benchmarks tell you about that benchmark's schema, not yours. Logos on a landing page tell you about the marketing budget. The only test that predicts anything is pointing a candidate at your own worst schema and asking the five questions your team actually asks — which is why there is a free plan here with no card and no expiry.