What is Mathesar?
Mathesar is a straightforward open source tool that provides a spreadsheet-like interface to a PostgreSQL database. Our web-based interface helps you and your collaborators work with data more independently and comfortably – no technical skills needed.
You can use Mathesar to build data models, enter data, and even build reports. You host your own Mathesar installation, which gives you ownership, privacy, and control of your data.
Mathesar is a non-profit project. Our goal is to make understanding and working with data easy for everyone.
Databases have been around for a long time and solve common data problems really well. But working with databases often requires custom software. Or complex tooling that people struggle to get their heads around.
We want to make existing database functionality more accessible – in a user-friendly way.
Mathesar is a project at the Center for Complex Interventions, a nonprofit that helps communities translate science into action.
+ databases in our personal life
We're a group of industry veterans with a love of open source. Our core team members have founded startups and worked at a variety of companies – from nonprofits to large multinational companies. We've also led projects in large open source communities like Creative Commons, CiviCRM, and Ember.js.
“My husband and I use a database-backed application to track movies. Movies we own, movies we want to watch, movies we’ve watched.
I had to write a bunch of code for it, but it would have been much faster to build it using Mathesar – if it had existed!”
“I have an older relative who has been compiling family genealogy data for years through an arduous process of paper forms in the mail. I’d like to digitize it for future generations! Spreadsheets are a poor fit because of the data’s highly relational nature. And the family wants to maintain privacy, making existing solutions unappealing.
With Mathesar, our family will eventually be able to collaboratively manage this data and visualize it in new and exciting ways!”
“As someone who really enjoys cooking at home, I’m thinking Mathesar would be a great for storing all my recipes in one place. Being able to search and filter my recipes based on ingredients and cooking time would be really cool. I’m excited to give it a try!”
“I intend to use a database to maintain a personal diary, but with data tracking!
I’ll be logging my daily life: my anime watching habits, exercise routine, work progress, social interactions etc., I can analyze this data to gain valuable insights into my own behavior and lifestyle.
Mathesar is going to make all of this a breeze!”
“I’m using a database (and planning to use Mathesar) to store and analyze info I collect about various countries. e.g. cost of living, tax rates, population statistics, economic statistics, etc.
I’m tentatively calling it the Country Comparator.”
“I use calculators for MMORPG games, to find the most efficient item to use for doing something in the game.
Since the game has a real-time market, a relational database is really useful for reflecting the price changes across a lot of calculators.”
“Mathesar would be great for scraping and reporting. For example, I scraped a poorly-done government website for making appointments with doctors. That allowed me to query reservation slots, watch for cancellations, and book a consultation much earlier than I otherwise could have.”
“I collect data about my health from various tracking tools like continuos glucose monitors, sleep tracking rings, activity tracking chip in my shoes, and body composition analysis devices.
I plan to use Mathesar to log all of these data in a single database in a normalized manner and draw correlations between them. For example: What kind food of gives me the maximum push during my workouts?”
Mathesar will always be 100% open source and self-hostable.
We’re currently funded through the generous support of:
In late 2023, we will release a cloud hosted version of Mathesar with paid plans. This will help us fund the project in the long-term.
We remain committed to open source principles and will not create closed-source features or accept funding that would compromise our values.
