---
id: mycli
version: "2.13.2"
license: BSD-3-Clause
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# mycli — Rich MySQL terminal client with autocompletion, syntax highlighting, and dataframes

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 132.5K/mo

## What it is and what it does

mycli is a terminal-based MySQL client that replaces the standard mysql command-line tool with a modern, interactive interface. It connects to MySQL, MariaDB, Percona, TiDB, and Apache Doris databases and provides context-aware SQL auto-completion (suggesting table names after FROM, column names after WHERE), syntax highlighting via Pygments, and fuzzy history search. It supports multiline queries, favorite queries with Jinja templating, shell-style output redirection, and optional integration with Polars for dataframe transforms and plots.

The package has 19 runtime dependencies including prompt_toolkit (the interactive UI backbone), PyMySQL (database connection), sqlparse and sqlglot (SQL parsing), and optional tools like pyfzf (fuzzy search) and keyring (password storage). Installation is straightforward via pip; the project is actively maintained (last commit 2026-08-12) and well-established (first release 2015-07-26). It requires Python 3.10 or later and is tested on macOS and Linux with partial support for Windows and WSL.

Use it for:

- Interactive MySQL development and debugging when you need auto-completion and syntax highlighting instead of the bare mysql CLI.
- Running ad-hoc queries with fuzzy history search to quickly find and re-execute previous commands.
- Saving and executing parameterized queries using Jinja templating for repeated tasks with different values.
- Exploring large result sets using fzf output explorer or piping results to external tools with shell-style redirects.
- Querying multiple MySQL-compatible databases (MariaDB, Percona, TiDB, Doris) from a single unified client.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

mycli is a command-line client for MySQL and compatible databases (MariaDB, Percona, TiDB, Apache Doris) that provides auto-completion, syntax highlighting, and interactive query features.

Yes, if you regularly work with MySQL or compatible databases from the terminal. The auto-completion, syntax highlighting, and fuzzy search significantly improve the interactive query experience over the standard mysql client. Install via `pip install mycli[all]` to get all optional features. Note one known vulnerability (PYSEC-2023-213) exists; verify it does not affect your use case before deploying in production.

## Install

pip install mycli
uv add mycli
poetry add mycli

## Installing mycli

Before you install: Low friction installation as a pure Python wheel. Active maintenance with a recent release (2 days old) and substantial community engagement (11962 GitHub stars). Requires Python 3.10 or better.

License in practice: BSD-3-Clause is permissive; you can use mycli freely in commercial and private projects with minimal restrictions, provided you include the license notice.

Quickstart:

pip install mycli
mycli --help
mycli -u root -p password -h localhost

Requires Python 3.10 or better; a MySQL-compatible database server must be accessible at connection time.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the single known vulnerability (PYSEC-2023-213) affects current version 2.13.2 or has been patched.
- Performance characteristics when handling very large result sets or complex queries.
- Stability and feature completeness on Windows (documentation notes partial support).

## Package facts

- License: BSD-3-Clause (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 132.5K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: 1

## Tags

mysql command line client, sql terminal with auto-completion, mysql cli with syntax highlighting, interactive database shell, mysql repl, terminal sql client, mysql query tool, cli-tool, database-client, repl

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