# MCP Toolbox for Databases vs Postgres MCP Pro (slim)

> MCP Toolbox for Databases scores 77.7 (BB) to Postgres MCP Pro's 37 (F) for sql databases. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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MCP Toolbox for Databases scores 77.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Postgres MCP Pro's 37 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do sql databases.

- MCP Toolbox for Databases: BB 77.7, rank #27 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mcp-toolbox-databases.min.md
- Postgres MCP Pro: F 37, rank #1357 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/postgres-mcp-pro.min.md
- MCP Toolbox for Databases, good for Agents and coding assistants that need one server across Google Cloud data services and common databases, or production agents with curated SQL tools. Ahead on Reliability, 80 against 41; Schema & documentation, 85 against 56; Agent ergonomics, 82 against 57; Security & auth, 75 against 26; Maintenance & community, 95 against 8. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; No incidents deducted, where Postgres MCP Pro loses 8 points for them.
- Postgres MCP Pro, good for An operator who wants an agent to diagnose and tune a self-managed Postgres, with a pinned install and a low-privilege role. Also No key needed to call it.

| Category | MCP Toolbox for Databases | Postgres MCP Pro |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 80 | 41 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 85 | 56 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 82 | 57 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 75 | 26 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 95 | 8 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 64 | 65 |

| Fact (where they differ) | MCP Toolbox for Databases | Postgres MCP Pro |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Google | Crystal DBA |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP | stdio, SSE (legacy) |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 29 | 9 |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | `io.github.googleapis/mcp-toolbox` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-11-05 | 2025-05-16 |
| Popularity | 17k stars | 3.2k stars, 229k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (2) |

Why the edge:
- Maintenance & community, MCP Toolbox for Databases +87: MCP Toolbox for Databases 95 (v1.16.0 on 5 November 2026, one day before this check (30). Eight releases from v1.10.0 (27 August) to v1.16.0 in the 90 days (20). Pull requests merge daily and new tools land in each fortnightly release, though 432 issues and pull requests are open (20). io.github.googleapis/mcp-toolbox is in the official registry at 1.16.0 (15). Release automation, lint, tests and conformance workflows (10). 30 + 20 + 20 + 15 + 10 = 95.); Postgres MCP Pro 8 (Last release 0.3.0 on 16 May 2025 (0). No release in the last 90 days. Main has a batch of 11 merges from 19 to 22 January 2026 and one commit on 15 August 2026 (0). 37 open issues and 35 open pull requests, a request for a release (#162) open since March 2026 and no maintainer reply on the security report. A commenter on #187 says the project is unmaintained since Crystal DBA's acquisition by Temporal, which we couldn't confirm (5). Not in the official MCP registry. A lookup for io.github.crystaldba/postgres-mcp returns 404 (0). Dependencies were refreshed on main in January, but the published package has the unbounded `mcp` dependency that now breaks it (3).)
- Security & auth, MCP Toolbox for Databases +49: MCP Toolbox for Databases 75 (Source credentials stay in Toolbox, Google sources use IAM, and optional MCP authorisation validates OAuth 2.1 JWTs with required scopes. --allowed-origins and --allowed-hosts default to *, which the CLI docs themselves call unsafe even on localhost, though the default bind is 127.0.0.1 (20). Read-only mode is enforced at the engine, write tools are suppressed, and custom tools can fix SQL and bind parameters to the signed-in user (18). The security docs cover prompt injection and screening through Model Armor (12). OpenTelemetry traces and metrics per call when exported (10). Google's vulnerability intake with a stated response time and GitHub advisories (15). 20 + 18 + 12 + 10 + 15 = 75.); Postgres MCP Pro 26 (One database URI from `DATABASE_URI` or the command line, with whatever privileges its role has. The SSE and HTTP transports have no authentication and bind to localhost by default (10). Restricted mode parses every statement with pglast against an allowlist of statement types and functions, runs it in a read-only transaction and stops it after 30 seconds. But unrestricted is the default, every config example in the README uses it, and #178 (opened 6 June 2026) shows restricted mode reading server files through a function in the FROM clause. The fix (#200) is unmerged (10). The README discusses LLM-generated damage at length but says nothing about instructions hidden in table data, and rows reach the model unmarked (3). Restricted-mode queries are tagged `/* crystaldba */`, so they can be picked out in Postgres logs and pg_stat_statements (3). No SECURITY.md, and the #178 reporter says private advisories aren't enabled (0).)
- Reliability, MCP Toolbox for Databases +39: MCP Toolbox for Databases 80 (Scored as local software the owner runs. A Go binary, a container in Artifact Registry and @toolbox-sdk/server on npm, with install paths per platform (20). Tests, lint, conformance and nightly tier-report workflows in the repository; the pass state wasn't read (15). 432 open issues and pull requests on a repository with 16,818 stars and releases every two weeks, triaged with labels, though the backlog is large (15). Semantic versioning with a published policy, release-please CHANGELOG and an UPGRADING.md (15). 1.x since well before this check, v1.16.0 now (15). 20 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 15 = 80.); Postgres MCP Pro 41 (Scored as a local stdio package. postgres-mcp on PyPI and the crystaldba/postgres-mcp Docker image, Python 3.12 or later stated. But PyPI's only current release, 0.3.0 from May 2025, asks for `mcp[cli]>=1.5.0` with no ceiling, and since MCP Python SDK 2.0.0 shipped on 28 July 2026 a fresh `uvx postgres-mcp` pulls it and fails with "No module named 'mcp.server.fastmcp'" (#187). The `<2.0` pin landed on main on 15 August and hasn't been released (10). CI runs ruff, pyright and pytest with a Postgres container on every push and pull request, with 25 unit test files. We couldn't see whether main passes (20). 37 open issues, among them the broken install, failures on custom schemas (#181) and two unmerged pull requests for connection-pool leaks (#177, #195) (6). Semver tags with no changelog (5). Pre-1.0 (0).)
- Schema & documentation, MCP Toolbox for Databases +29: MCP Toolbox for Databases 85 (Every tool's parameters are typed in tools.yaml and published as JSON Schema over MCP (25). mcp-toolbox.dev serves llms.txt (10). Prebuilt descriptions vary from one line ("Use this tool to execute a single SQL statement.") to detailed, and few say when not to use a tool (12). Typed parameters with required flags; execute_sql takes free SQL (12). Many examples, samples and codelabs; error responses are thinly documented (11). Semver, a dated CHANGELOG and versioned docs (15). 25 + 10 + 12 + 12 + 11 + 15 = 85.); Postgres MCP Pro 56 (FastMCP builds typed JSON Schema for all nine tools from Python type hints (25 less 5, since `hypothetical_indexes` is a list of free-form dicts) (20). No llms.txt. The README is Markdown on GitHub with a tool table (5). `explain_query` warns that `analyze` runs the query and `analyze_db_health` lists its checks, but most descriptions are one line ("List objects in a schema") and none says when not to use a tool (10). `method` is an enum. `object_type`, `health_type` and `sort_by` are free strings with valid values only in the prose, `limit` has no bounds and `execute_sql` gives `sql` a default of "all" (7). `explain_query` carries two worked examples. Errors come back as "Error: <Postgres message>" text (9). Semver tags, no changelog (5).)
- Agent ergonomics, MCP Toolbox for Databases +25: MCP Toolbox for Databases 82 (The PostgreSQL prebuilt set lists 29 tools (15), split into five toolsets a client can load one at a time, and write tools disappear in read-only mode (plus 8). Results are bounded per tool, some prebuilt tools take limits, and BigQuery tools compact empty schema fields (14). Errors come back as tool errors; paths are sanitised from file errors since 1.15.0 (12). readOnlyHint and destructiveHint are set per tool and switch with the source's read-only state (18). Prebuilt sets need only environment variables, and SDKs exist in Python, JavaScript, Go and Java (15). 23 + 14 + 12 + 18 + 15 = 82.); Postgres MCP Pro 57 (Nine tools with about 2,500 characters of descriptions, roughly 1,300 tokens of definitions by our estimate (23). `get_top_queries` takes a `limit`, but `execute_sql` returns every row and the index tools append a `_langfuse_trace` block by default unless `POSTGRES_MCP_INCLUDE_LANGFUSE_TRACE=false` (6). Restricted mode explains its refusals (`Only SELECT, ANALYZE, VACUUM, EXPLAIN, SHOW and other read-only statements are allowed`) and its 30-second timeout suggests simplifying the query. Errors arrive as ordinary text rather than flagged tool errors (13). Annotations exist on main since January 2026 but not in the released 0.3.0, and on main `explain_query` claims `readOnlyHint` though `analyze: true` executes the statement in unrestricted mode (5). Sensible defaults, at most one required parameter per tool. Python only, plus Docker (10).)