Top 5 tools to get live data into Google Sheets from your SQL database, 2022

Google Sheets is an incredibly powerful tool for analyzing data, especially for non-technical teams who don't have knowledge of SQL and still prefer spreadsheets to Business intelligence tools like Tableau, Looker, or Trevor.io (that's us!).

The challenge is that business data in a database is typically changing and updating all the time and the standard method for reflecting those changes in a spreadsheet - i.e. asking an engineer every 5 minutes to run some SQL for you so you can upload or copy and paste the results - is a nightmare for everyone involved.

But not to worry! Here are some tools that can help  🤓.

Top 5 tools for connecting Google Sheets to your database

Trevor.io

Live stream SQL results from your database to Google Sheets and have them update automatically every hour.

• Link: Trevor.io/stream-live-data-to-google-sheets/
• Price: Free 14 day trial.  Then $250 / month for unlimited activity.

Trevor.io lets both your technical and non-technical teams build queries - using SQL or a powerful query builder - and then, via a simple link that you can copy and paste, feed the results directly into Google Sheets. From there, the results will update automatically around once every hour.

To get started:

1. Create an account.
2. Securely connect your MySQL, Postgres, Redshift, Snowflake, or SQL Server database (this takes seconds).
3. Build your query, give it a name, and save it.
4. Click the share button and then select the Google Sheets tab.
5. Copy the link, and paste it into any cell in Sheets. Done!

Trevor.io works with both long running queries and queries with thousands of rows of results.

Learn more about how to power real-time dashboards using Google Sheets and Trevor.io here.

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Zapier

Connect Google Sheets with various databases and send data when it matches certain conditions

• Link: Zapier.com/apps/google-sheets/integrations
• Pricing: $0 for upto 100 tasks per month

Zapier is an incredibly popular tool that enables teams to connect apps and automate workflows. It's a great no-code (for the most part) solution and gives you lots of flexibility to send new rows of data, including from custom SQL queries, from your database to Google Sheets only when the conditions you're interested in have been met.

To see all the triggers and actions, just click the link above and scroll down. This page is specifically for Postgres, but Zapier supports other databases too, including MySQL, Redshift, and SQL Server. Currently, it seems Snowflake is not supported.

Related Post: The Top 7 PowerBI Alternatives to Empower Your Non-Tech Teams

Heroku Dataclips

Easily share query results to Google Sheets and beyond

• Link: Devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dataclips
• Price: Free

If you're using Heroku, DataClips is a brilliant solution that paires nicely with your Heroku Postgres database.

In a nutshell, you write SQL, and DataClips gives you links to share the results, including one to import them into Google Sheets. This import link works in a very similar way to ours at Trevor.io.

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QueryClips

Data sharing for savvy PMs and developers.

• Link: QueryClips.com
• Price: From $12 / month.

Built as a developer friendly data exploration tool for startups, QueryClips lets you write SQL and easily share or export the results. It comes with some useful tutorials for people who are new to SQL and want to do things like track weekly user growth.

QueryClips lets you do things like push query results into third party services via CSV or JSON, and create a linked Google Sheet to share with colleagues.

Kloud.io SuperSheets

Get business data delivered real-time from any external source into your spreadsheet

• Link: Gsuite.google.com/marketplace/app/kloudio/947221334909
• Price: Free 14 day trial. Team plans from $79/user/month

Kloudio is slightly different to the other tools on this page. It lets you access a whole range of data sources in Google Sheets, from Salesforce and Facebook ads, to Intercom and MongoDB.

You can choose the data you want to bring in, and then set how often it should update, directly from Google Sheets, without code.

According to their Google page, Kloudio is used by some pretty hefty companies, including Netflix and Rakuten. Impressive!

There you have it!

If you want to write SQL or use a GUI querying interface, stream the live results to Sheets, and have them automatically update, try Trevor.io.

If you want to trigger data imports into Sheets when a specific condition is met, try Zapier.

If a simple SQL editor with sharing links will do, try DataClips or QueryClips.

If you want to add a few extra datasources, try Kloudio.