Connect to Aiven PostgreSQL from a native Mac app.

Aiven's place among managed Postgres options

Aiven runs managed Postgres (along with several other open-source data services) across AWS, GCP, and Azure, and it's a common pick for teams that want a managed database without being locked to one cloud's native offering. Like Neon or Supabase, it's still standard PostgreSQL under the hood, reachable over the normal wire protocol, so a native Postgres client works with it directly, no special driver required.

What Aiven manages for you

Beyond hosting the database itself, Aiven handles automated backups, point-in-time recovery, and version upgrades on a schedule you set rather than one you have to remember to trigger. None of that changes how you connect or query; it's the reason teams pick a managed service over running their own Postgres box in the first place, and it's worth knowing it's there even though QueryFlow itself has no visibility into backup schedules or upgrade windows beyond what shows up as a maintenance notice in the console.

Getting the connection details

From the Aiven console, open your service's Overview tab and copy the connection details: host, port, the default database (usually named defaultdb), username, and password. Aiven also gives you a full connection URI in the form postgres://user:password@host:port/defaultdb?sslmode=require, which is the fastest way to fill in a new connection without copying each field separately.

Adding the connection in QueryFlow

Click the + next to Databases, pick PostgreSQL, and either paste the full URI or enter host, port, database, username, and password individually. Aiven requires SSL on every connection; set SSL mode to require at minimum, or verify-full if you've downloaded Aiven's CA certificate and want the stricter check. Credentials are stored in the macOS Keychain once saved, wiped if you delete the connection later.

A worked example

Once connected, querying an Aiven-hosted Postgres database looks exactly like querying any other Postgres instance:

SELECT customer_id, plan, mrr, created_at
FROM billing.subscriptions
WHERE plan != 'trial'
ORDER BY created_at DESC
LIMIT 50;

There's nothing Aiven-specific about the SQL itself. The only differences from a self-managed Postgres box are in the connection step: the SSL requirement, the default database name, and the fact that Aiven manages failover and backups for you behind that same endpoint.

What's different from a self-hosted instance

Aiven handles patching, backups, and failover, which means the host and port you connect to can change during a planned maintenance window if you're on a plan with automatic failover to a replica. If a connection that worked yesterday suddenly fails with a network-level error rather than a login error, check the Aiven console for a maintenance notice before assuming your credentials are the problem.

Beyond querying

An Aiven Postgres connection works as a source or target in Data Sync the same as any other Postgres connection, useful for syncing Aiven data into a warehouse like Snowflake or BigQuery for reporting, or loading a CSV into an Aiven database as a one-time backfill. It also works with Watch This for alerting on a query's result the same way any Postgres connection does.

Read replicas for reporting

A plan with a read replica gives you a second endpoint with its own host and port, meant for exactly this kind of workload: pointing analytical queries at the replica instead of the primary, so a long-running report doesn't compete with production traffic for the same connection pool. Add it as a second QueryFlow connection with a name that makes the distinction obvious, aiven-prod-primary and aiven-prod-replica, rather than relying on memory to know which one you're pointed at before running something heavy.

Migrating an existing database onto Aiven

If you're moving from a self-hosted Postgres box or another managed provider onto Aiven, the migration itself happens through Aiven's own tooling or a standard pg_dump/pg_restore pair, not through QueryFlow. Once the new Aiven service is up and populated, add it as a fresh connection the same way as any other Postgres instance; QueryFlow doesn't carry over connection settings from wherever the database used to live, so budget a few minutes to re-add it and confirm the SSL mode before pointing production traffic at the new endpoint.

When a different tool makes more sense

If you're managing Aiven services across databases beyond Postgres, Kafka, OpenSearch, ClickHouse, from one place, Aiven's own console remains the tool for provisioning and service-level administration. QueryFlow is for the querying, syncing, and alerting layer once the Postgres service itself is up and running, not a replacement for Aiven's own management console.