ScaleBase: a database console for Scaleway SQL

Scaleway offers you SQL databases and exactly zero ways to actually look at what's in them. You just get a connection string and that’s it. After that, every small thing turns into five small things. Want to see a row? Open psql. Want to run a one-off query? Open psql. Want to give a new engineer access? DM them the password and hope it ends up somewhere reasonable. (Spoiler: it ends up in their notes app, next to a grocery list from 2022.)

I've been running different workloads on Scaleway for a while now, and the gap between the database working and being able to debug what's in the database kept getting more annoying. So I built ScaleBase.

What it actually does

Three things.

Access the data without reaching for psql. Click into a table, scan it, fix that one wrong value, move on. The data inspector you reach for ten times a day, in the browser tab you're already in.

Run a query without SSH-ing through a jump host. Pull the number for the meeting that starts in three minutes. Investigate yesterday's spike. Save the queries you keep typing. Read-only guardrails for the teammate you don't want writing migrations on a Friday afternoon.

Onboard a teammate without forwarding the password. A new engineer is productive on day one. Nobody has the raw connection string sitting in their notes app. When someone leaves, you revoke their access in a click. No database password rotation needed, no awkward Slack message asking them to please delete that DM from June.

Works with both serverless and dedicated Scaleway SQL. And worth mentioning: ScaleBase doesn't only talk to Scaleway databases. Paste a connection string for any Postgres instance and it works the same way. Staging databases or other instances hosted elsewhere. The Scaleway integration just happened to be the main pain point, but the underlying tooling is just generic Postgres.

That's the whole product. It's deliberately small. The goal isn't to become a hosted database vendor. The goal is to make Scaleway SQL (and the rest of your Postgres) pleasant to actually use.

Built and hosted in Europe on purpose

The other reason ScaleBase exists is that I didn't want to wait for Scaleway to fix this. Which they probably won't, since it's not what they do. The obvious alternatives with proper management UIs are companies like Neon, PlanetScale, or Supabase. You can build perfectly good software on any of them, and yes, most of them will happily host your data in Frankfurt or Paris if you ask. But the company itself is incorporated in Delaware. Which means the tool managing your European data is operated under US law, regardless of which data center the bytes live in.

That's the part the "hosted in the EU" pitch tends to skip. Hosting location is a server address. Legal jurisdiction is who has to comply with which subpoena. They are not the same thing, and only one of them is actually load-bearing.

ScaleBase is built and operated by a Finnish company. Servers run in Paris. Same EU jurisdiction as your database, same legal regime, same trust boundary. Your Scaleway access keys are encrypted at rest. The console never echoes them back. There's no third party between you and your data with a different set of rules to follow.

If you're running European infrastructure on purpose, the company managing it should be European on purpose too.

A small aside about who this is for

ScaleBase exists because I wanted it to exist. I'm one of the users. The other users are people who already know what a connection string is and who have at some point struggled with the same data management issues.

The slightly bigger point is that this used to be a six-month, six-figure project, and now it's a weekend. The "build the missing tool yourself" path used to be theoretical for most people. While I'm not saying everyone should build their own internal tools, I am saying that "we wish this existed" used to end with a sigh and now ends with a working URL.

Where to find it

Free. No credit card, no email-verification jail, no waitlist. You bring your own Scaleway account, paste in a scoped IAM key, and you're in. Or paste a connection string for any other Postgres you have lying around.

If you're using Scaleway SQL, this is the data console. If you have other Postgres databases lying around, this works for those too. If you have neither, you probably stopped reading three sections ago, and that's also fine.

Learn more at: scalebase.fixerofthenorth.com