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Oracle SQL Developer vs dbForge Studio for SQL Server comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

dbForge Studio for SQL Server
Ranking in IDE
10th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Oracle SQL Developer
Ranking in IDE
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the IDE category, the mindshare of dbForge Studio for SQL Server is 4.5%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle SQL Developer is 7.1%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IDE Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle SQL Developer7.1%
dbForge Studio for SQL Server4.5%
Other88.4%
IDE
 

Featured Reviews

AM
Head BI SBU at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Easy to use, quick data usage, and a helpful knowledge base
The only issue that I have is that it depends on hardware resources, it takes a lot, that is the only set back with the solution. What we are using is fine for now. I believe that the newer versions 2016 or 2018 SQL have improved a lot and have all of the features available. It would be useful to have some form of self-service capabilities or some form an AI to provide a summary and to be able to tell you what has happened. Also, the inclusion of some integration tools would be helpful. In the next release, I would like to see some form of artificial intelligence with some form of summaries telling you what has happened without having to get into a complex query to get that information.
Vikram_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Architect at Ontario Power Generation
Has improved development efficiency through reusable components and intuitive programming features
When errors occur while programming, they are very generic. Even when searching the internet, the errors remain generic and it takes considerable time to understand the fix. This was predominantly felt because we were mostly working on writing code and developing features. Error handling needs to be improved. The patches and upgrade process is very long. In the last year and a half, I haven't upgraded, so we don't know if latest features have arrived. Another issue is with sessions. If we were working on code and then switch off our laptop for two to three days, the session would keep running. This consumes many resources and flags to the team that a user has been continuously using Oracle SQL Developer. There should be a timeout period for inactive sessions.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I like the ease of use and quick data usage."
"If you do SQL for a living you need a robust productivity tool."
"The solution is very scalable; if you set up a very large database, billions of records or so, if you have enough memory and enough disk space, it's quite easy to do."
"The features that I find are the most valuable are easy querying, screen objects, relational diagram creation, and simplicity."
"It's quite easy to install and use from a local machine or laptop, as well as on a server."
"It's free, it's very easy to use, and has a nice GUI."
"License is free, setup is simple and scriptable."
"When I measure the amount of time for the same query to run on three different tools, Oracle SQL Developer leads the charts, and on average, if it takes around ten minutes on SQL Server, it takes roughly five to six minutes on Oracle SQL Developer, saving us nearly half an hour to one hour a day."
"The main benefit of SQL Developer is that it is free."
"It's a no-cost license and it offers outstanding functionality on that basis."
"It's free and very user-friendly."
"It's an independent platform, you can use it anywhere, it's good, scalable and a lot of times it works as-is, with very few calls to support."
"Everybody should try it because you do not have to code things to create output from JSON or DDL."
 

Cons

"The lock files and login are two features we've had issues with. As far as I can see, there's no way to switch off the login in SQL Servers. If there could be a way to switch off the login, for transactions, or in operations, or tables, that'd be great."
"The only issue that I have is that it depends on hardware resources, it takes a lot, that is the only set back with the solution."
"I once had a problem stopping a long running query, not sure whose fault was, mine, the server or something else."
"Even though it installs easy, there is a lot of Java behind the tool. It seems like some of the Java is more memory-intensive."
"They were not supportive. I didn't get a solution."
"I think it would be great to have an overview over the sessions it opens so that we could easily see and control which connections to the database we want to keep open, which ones are hanging; and it would be great to make them independent from each other."
"The initial setup is always a problem, it cannot find the Java SDK."
"The downsides of Oracle SQL Developer include hard typing."
"I would like to see it support NoSQL database."
"Scalability has room for improvement. Often if you have to do a heavy load of queries or are getting large result sets you have to be careful not to overload the Java virtual machine that's running."
"There is room for improvement in the Real Time SQL Monitoring."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Because it's 2012 version, it's a one-off enterprise license that we have never had to upgrade."
"It's a no-cost license and it offers outstanding functionality on that basis."
"It's a free tool."
"It has the advantage that it's free. The next best competitor would cost several thousand dollars."
"It is basically free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
17%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle SQL Developer?
The pricing of Oracle SQL Developer depends on the size of the company and the project. I cannot use Oracle or other solutions if I am just starting. If I start with MySQL, it depends on the size o...
What needs improvement with Oracle SQL Developer?
I want to address performance issues with large amounts of data. When I run queries that return lakhs or millions of rows, Oracle SQL Developer sometimes freezes, takes time to load, or even crashe...
What is your primary use case for Oracle SQL Developer?
In my current project at Cognizant, Oracle SQL Developer is one of the targets to load the data after extracting and transforming it, so this is our use case for my project. For example, I was at a...
 

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Sample Customers

Boeing, Sony, Honda, Oracle, BMW, Samsung
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Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle SQL Developer vs. dbForge Studio for SQL Server and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.