This page compares Calíope with the three tools a Mac user weighs it against most often: TablePlus, Sequel Ace and DBeaver. Each one gets the same three paragraphs, in the same order: what it does better than Calíope, what Calíope does that it does not, and what it costs. Third-party facts verified on 3 September 2026; prices in USD as each vendor publishes them. Calíope’s own price is the one in force since 8 September 2026. The full table on the home page lists the wider field; this page covers the three that weigh most, in more words than a cell allows.
Compared with TablePlus
What TablePlus does better. It reaches engines Calíope does not: SQL Server, Oracle and Redis among them. It runs on Windows and Linux as well as macOS, with an iOS app on the side. Its AI plugin takes your own key for OpenAI, Anthropic or GitHub Copilot, or points at a local model. If your day moves between a Mac and a Windows machine, or between MySQL and SQL Server, that is the difference that decides.
What Calíope does that TablePlus does not. An iPad app written for the iPad, not a minimal companion. Widgets on the macOS desktop; TablePlus has widgets on iOS only, since June 2026, and none on the Mac. Apple Intelligence as an assistant that needs no key and sends nothing off the device, next to Ollama on your own machine and your own key for OpenAI, Gemini or Claude. And an MCP server, read-only and on loopback, for an AI client on the same Mac; TablePlus’s documentation does not mention MCP.
Price and licence. TablePlus: Basic $99 for one device, Standard $129 for two; a perpetual licence with one year of updates, then $59 per device and year to keep receiving them. Calíope: $99.99 once, with a 60-day trial and every future update included. Verified 3 September 2026.
Compared with Sequel Ace
What Sequel Ace does better. It costs nothing, its source is public under the MIT licence, and it is alive: 5.4.0 shipped on 13 August 2026 and 6.0.0 Beta 1 on 3 September 2026. For MySQL and MariaDB on a Mac it does the daily work and asks nothing of you in return. If you want to read the code that talks to your production server, you can.
What Calíope does that Sequel Ace does not. PostgreSQL in the same app, with its own provider: Sequel Ace is MySQL and MariaDB only. An iPad app: Sequel Ace is macOS only. Widgets on the Mac desktop and on the iPad’s Home and Lock Screens, so the server’s state is there without opening the app. And an AI assistant, with Apple Intelligence needing no key, Ollama on your machine, or your own key.
Price and licence. Sequel Ace: free, MIT licence, from the Mac App Store or GitHub. Calíope: $99.99 once, 60-day trial, updates included. If Sequel Ace covers your day, the $99.99 buys you nothing you need.
Compared with DBeaver
What DBeaver does better. Breadth. DBeaver connects to SQL Server, Oracle and Redis and to a long list of engines beyond them, on macOS, Windows and Linux, and the Community edition is free, with an Apple Silicon and an Intel DMG (26.2.0, 30 August 2026). The paid editions add an AI assistant and, at the top of the range, a web edition and team features that Calíope has no plans for.
What Calíope does that DBeaver does not. An iPad app; DBeaver has none. Widgets on the macOS desktop and on the iPad; DBeaver has none. An AI assistant included, with Apple Intelligence needing no key; in DBeaver the assistant starts at the paid Lite edition. A Mac app written in Swift and installed from the App Store, inside the sandbox; DBeaver is a Java application on the Eclipse platform. That last one is a fact about how each is built, not a verdict: DBeaver does its job on a Mac.
Price and licence. DBeaver Community: free. DBeaver Lite $113, Enterprise $255 and Ultimate $510, each per year; Lite and Enterprise are also sold monthly, at $12 and $26. Calíope: $99.99 once, 60-day trial, updates included — less than one year of Lite.
What Calíope does not do
Seven things, written down so nobody finds them out after paying.
- No Windows, no Linux. Calíope is written for Apple platforms and stays there.
- No SQL Server, no Oracle, no Redis. The engines are MySQL, MariaDB and PostgreSQL, plus local SQLite files and a set of MongoDB tools.
- No shared team workspaces. There is no server of ours and no accounts.
- No agent with write permissions. The assistant proposes SQL and you run it; the MCP server is read-only, one statement per call, capped at 200 rows.
- No replication monitor on PostgreSQL. It is a declared absence: the app says so instead of showing the tool greyed out.
- MongoDB runs on a community driver and is built so that it can be removed. The tools are there and they work; they are not the reason to buy.
- App Store only. There is no DMG and no licence key; the purchase and the trial are tied to your Apple ID.
The market review behind this page, our own and dated 3 September 2026, also listed three gaps that no longer exist: an MCP server, Apple Intelligence and local models. All three are in the version this site describes.
Which one should you pick
Sequel Ace is excellent and free, and if it covers your day, it is the right choice. If you need a Swiss Army knife across every engine on Earth, or a client that follows you to Windows and Linux, TablePlus or DBeaver are excellent alternatives.
Calíope is for the person who works on MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL from a Mac and an iPad, wants the server’s state on the desktop without opening the app, wants an assistant that works from the first launch without a key, or works in Spanish, French, German or Italian and wants the whole app and its Help in that language. The full table lists the wider field. Sixty days without a card is long enough to find out which one you are.