SQL Formatter: Format SQL Queries Online

How to use the SQL formatter

1. Paste your SQL into the input box, or type a query directly.
2. Pick a dialect label — Standard, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, T-SQL, or PL/SQL — for your own reference.
3. Choose keyword casing: UPPERCASE for the common convention, lowercase, or Preserve to leave casing as-is.
4. Set the indent size anywhere from 1 to 8 spaces (the default is 2).
5. Press Format to beautify, or Minify to collapse the query to one line and strip comments.
6. Click Copy to send the result to your clipboard, or Download to save a .sql file.

How SQL formatting works (and why casing is safe)

SQL keywords are case-insensitive under the ANSI/ISO SQL standard, so SELECT, select, and Select all run identically. That is why a formatter can safely re-case keywords: it changes appearance, not behavior. The widely used SQL style guide by Simon Holywell recommends UPPERCASE reserved words (SELECT, WHERE, JOIN) with lowercase snake_case identifiers, so keywords stand out from your table and column names.

This tool is a beautifier, not a parser. It normalizes whitespace, inserts a newline before every major keyword (SELECT, FROM, WHERE, the JOIN family, GROUP BY, ORDER BY, and more), indents AND, OR, and ON conditions one level deeper, and tracks parenthesis depth to indent subqueries and CTEs. It re-cases only the keywords on its fixed list — your identifiers, string literals, and dialect quoting are left exactly as typed.

"Always capitalise the SQL reserved words... and make sure they are clearly separated from variable names."— Simon Holywell, SQL Style Guide

Worked examples: input → output

select id, name from users where active = 1 order by name

SELECT id, name
FROM users
WHERE active = 1
ORDER BY name

SELECT u.id, o.total
FROM users u
INNER JOIN orders o
  ON u.id = o.user_id
WHERE o.status = 'paid'

SELECT id  -- primary key
FROM   users

SELECT id FROM users

Identifier quoting by SQL dialect

Quoting an identifier (a table or column name) differs per database. The formatter preserves whichever character you use — this table is the reference for getting it right in each engine.

Source: ANSI SQL uses double quotes for identifiers and single quotes for string literals; MySQL adds backticks, T-SQL adds square brackets.

Why formatted SQL reduces bugs in review

A query on one line hides its logic. Once each clause sits on its own line and JOIN conditions are indented, a reviewer can see at a glance whether the join key is correct, whether a WHERE filter is missing, or whether an unexpected OR widens the result set. Consistent casing and indentation also shrink diff noise, so code review focuses on real logic changes instead of whitespace. That is the same readability principle behind formatting JSON and XML before review.