go-sql-driver/mysql VS sqlc

Compare go-sql-driver/mysql vs sqlc and see what are their differences.

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go-sql-driver/mysql sqlc
20 185
15,030 15,842
0.9% 2.8%
7.7 8.9
3 months ago 3 days ago
Go Go
Mozilla Public License 2.0 MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

go-sql-driver/mysql

Posts with mentions or reviews of go-sql-driver/mysql. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-07-15.
  • HTMX + Go : Build a CRUD App with Golang and HTMX
    4 projects | dev.to | 15 Jul 2024
    Next, we need to install some dependencies. We already know we are using MySQL as our database, thus, we need to install the MySQL driver for Golang.
  • Tools besides Go for a newbie
    36 projects | /r/golang | 26 Mar 2023
    IDE: use whatever make you productive. I personally use vscode. VCS: git, as golang communities use github heavily as base for many libraries. AFAIK Linter: use staticcheck for linting as it looks like mostly used linting tool in go, supported by many also. In Vscode it will be recommended once you install go plugin. Libraries/Framework: actually the standard libraries already included many things you need, decent enough for your day-to-day development cycles(e.g. `net/http`). But here are things for extra: - Struct fields validator: validator - Http server lib: chi router , httprouter , fasthttp (for non standard http implementations, but fast) - Web Framework: echo , gin , fiber , beego , etc - Http client lib: most already covered by stdlib(net/http), so you rarely need extra lib for this, but if you really need some are: resty - CLI: cobra - Config: godotenv , viper - DB Drivers: sqlx , postgre , sqlite , mysql - nosql: redis , mongodb , elasticsearch - ORM: gorm , entgo , sqlc(codegen) - JS Transpiler: gopherjs - GUI: fyne - grpc: grpc - logging: zerolog - test: testify , gomock , dockertest - and many others you can find here
  • Questions regarding prepared statements in database/sql
    3 projects | /r/golang | 23 Feb 2023
    I understand that database/db is an abstraction. As to the driver, sorry, it completely went out of my head. The guide primarily focuses on https://github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql, which is also what I’m interested in.
  • Make Deno MySQL driver works better
    3 projects | dev.to | 1 Dec 2022
    Authentication method mismatch is not allowed to occur more than once. It is not a part of MySQL protocol. go-sql-driver also has the same rule.
  • Question about inserting date into MySQL?
    1 project | /r/golang | 15 Nov 2022
    If you are using https://github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql you need to add parseTime=true to the DSN to be able to use time.Time.
  • Build REST API with Go Fiber and PlanetScale - Part 2
    1 project | dev.to | 19 Oct 2022
    package models import ( "gorm.io/driver/mysql" "gorm.io/gorm" ) var DB *gorm.DB func ConnectDatabase() { // refer https://github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql#dsn-data-source-name for details dsn := "root:@tcp(127.0.0.1:3309)/fiber-pscale?charset=utf8mb4&parseTime=True&loc=Local" database, err := gorm.Open(mysql.Open(dsn), &gorm.Config{}) if err != nil { panic("failed to connect database") } // Migrate the users table database.AutoMigrate(&User{}) DB = database }
  • Stuck $GOPATH/go.mod exists but should not
    1 project | /r/golang | 26 Aug 2022
    I've seen this error on line but there is no resolution to this error even when i run go get github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql
  • I Could Not Run a Sample Code to Use MySQL with Go on Docker (Error 1064)
    1 project | dev.to | 1 Jul 2022
    I use github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql package to use MySQL. The references are the official README.md, a sample code, the article Masao wrote (in Japanese), and the MariaDB document.
  • Golang future web frameworks!
    13 projects | /r/golang | 24 Apr 2022
    go-sql-driver/mysql 12.1k Stars, Used by 72.4k
  • Finding an Authorization Bypass on My Own Website
    8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Mar 2022
    > mysql_real_escape_string is still vulnerable when being used with some exotic character sets

    Indeed -- mysql_real_escape_string "mostly" fixes this problem by requiring a connection as one of its args, and since it's usually aware of the connection state, it can check that to see if one of those exotic charsets is in-use. But the problem is that there are multiple ways to change the connection charset, some of which the driver is aware of (e.g. in PHP mysqli set_charset) but some it is not (running textual statements like SET NAMES or SET CHARACTER SET).

    But generally an attacker won't ever have the ability to set an arbitrary exotic character set for the connection, unless they already have some other sql injection mechanism, in which case it's a moot point :)

    Driver documentation also typically mentions this problem. For example, here's the doc for doing client-side param interpolation in the most popular MySQL driver for Golang: https://github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql#interpolateparams

    It also explicitly detects if your initial connection settings attempt to use one of those charsets along with param interpolation, and throws an error if so: https://github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql/blob/21f789cd/dsn.go#...

    > Couldn't one just save the extra round-trip with length-prefixed strings by sending the query together with the parameters in a single message?

    AFAIK, no, not with the traditional MySQL binary protocol. The newer "X protocol" introduced in MySQL 5.7 does allow this, but it is not widely implemented in drivers.

sqlc

Posts with mentions or reviews of sqlc. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-08-26.
  • Nil Pointer Panic at 3 AM: Choosing the Right Go Database Tool to Save Your Sleep
    2 projects | dev.to | 26 Aug 2025
    SQLC is a modern marvel. It's not an ORM or a library; it's a code generator. You write raw SQL queries in .sql files, and sqlc generates fully type-safe, idiomatic Go code that you can call in your application.
  • I benchmarked nine Go SQLite drivers and here are the results
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Aug 2025
    I've been using the modernc driver for a few years in https://github.com/bbkane/enventory . It's worked perfectly with no drama. Combined with https://sqlc.dev/, I've been very happy writing (small) database applications in Go.
  • SQLx – The Rust SQL Toolkit
    16 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Jul 2025
    Speaking of Go, if you want compile-time type checking like what SQLx offers, the Go ecosystem has an option that is arguably even better at it:

    https://sqlc.dev/

    It has the advantage that it implements the parsing and type checking logic in pure Go, allowing it to import your migrations and infer the schema for type checking. With SQLx you need to have your database engine running at compile time during the proc macro execution with the schema already available. This makes SQLx kind of a non-starter for me, though I understand why nobody wants to do what sqlc does (it involves a lot of duplication that essentially reimplements database features.)

  • Sqlc: Generate type-safe code from SQL
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Apr 2025
  • sqlc: Type-Safe Querying in Go
    1 project | dev.to | 16 Mar 2025
  • Goravel: A Go framework inspired by Laravel
    9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 Mar 2025
    What would you use if ORM is to be avoided?

    Perhaps something like https://github.com/sqlc-dev/sqlc ?

  • User authentication in go
    10 projects | dev.to | 30 Jan 2025
    Next, let's write sql queries for retrieving our users & their permissions. Here we will use sqlc for type-safe code generation from our sql queries, and pgx as its backend
  • Rails for Everything
    18 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Jan 2025
  • Show HN: Generate type-safe code for SQL queries in any language
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 27 Nov 2024
    sqlc (https://sqlc.dev/) is amazing, but I needed to use it in several unsupported languages. So instead of creating a plugin for each of those languages, I created a generic one, which is based on go templates.
  • Some Go web dev notes
    16 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 29 Sep 2024
    I really wanted to like sqlc, but it had some major limitations and minor annoyances last time I tried it a few months ago. You might want to go through its list of issues[1] before adopting it.

    Things like no support for dynamic queries[2], one-to-many relationships[3], embedded CTEs[4], composite types[5], etc.

    It might work fine if you only have simple needs, but if you ever want to do something slightly sophisticated, you'll have to fallback to the manual approach. It's partly understandable, though. It cannot realistically support every feature of every DBMS, and it's explicitly not an ORM. But I still decided to stick to the manual approach for everything, instead of wondering whether something is or isn't supported by sqlc.

    [1]: https://github.com/sqlc-dev/sqlc/issues/

    [2]: https://github.com/sqlc-dev/sqlc/issues/3414

    [3]: https://github.com/sqlc-dev/sqlc/issues/3394

    [4]: https://github.com/sqlc-dev/sqlc/issues/3128

    [5]: https://github.com/sqlc-dev/sqlc/issues/2760

What are some alternatives?

When comparing go-sql-driver/mysql and sqlc you can also consider the following projects:

sqlx - general purpose extensions to golang's database/sql

jet - Type safe SQL builder with code generation and automatic query result data mapping

pgx - PostgreSQL driver and toolkit for Go

pq - Pure Go Postgres driver for database/sql

xo - Command line tool to generate idiomatic Go code for SQL databases supporting PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server

Sevalla - Deploy and host your apps and databases, now with $50 credit!
Sevalla is the PaaS you have been looking for! Advanced deployment pipelines, usage-based pricing, preview apps, templates, human support by developers, and much more!
sevalla.com
featured
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads
InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
www.influxdata.com
featured

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