dbForge SQL Complete

Quick facts

• Version: 2026.2.96, released November 9, 2026
• Developer: Devart
• Works in: SSMS 2016, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22, and Visual Studio 2015 to 2026
• Databases: SQL Server 2000 to 2025 (2000 with limited support), SQL Server on Linux, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure Synapse, Microsoft Fabric
• Platform: Windows 7 to 11 and Windows Server 2008 to 2025, with .NET Framework 4.7.2
• Editions: Express (free), Standard, Professional, Enterprise
• Installer size: 54.78 MB
• Price: Professional $149.95 a year or $299.95 perpetual; Standard $129.95 a year or $249.95 perpetual; Enterprise $199.95 a year or $399.95 perpetual
• Trial: 14 days with every feature, after which it falls back to the free Express edition (the download asks you to sign in with a free Devart account)
• Refund: 30-day money-back guarantee on annual and perpetual licenses
• What we checked: version 2026.2.96 and its November 9, 2026 date on Devart's download page and revision history, the 54.78 MB installer size listed there, the edition feature matrix, and the order page prices for all three paid editions, both as a 1-year subscription and as a perpetual license, on November 13, 2026. We didn't install it into our own SSMS.

Before you buy

• Standard is mostly completion and formatting. Refactoring, the T-SQL debugger, Find Invalid Objects, results-grid aggregates and search, tab coloring, session restore and the command-line formatter are Professional and up. The T-SQL Code Analyzer is Enterprise only.
• The order page opens on Professional, 1-year subscription, at $149.95. The edition, the perpetual license and 2- or 3-year terms are options on the same page.
• A subscription stops working when it lapses. A perpetual license keeps working and comes with a period of updates you can extend.
• Windows only, because SSMS and Visual Studio for Windows are.

Completion that knows your schema, including JOIN conditions

dbForge SQL Complete suggests tables, columns, keywords and functions based on where the cursor is and which database you're connected to, and it goes a step further than SSMS: after INNER JOIN it offers whole join clauses built from foreign keys, with the ON condition already filled in. A column picker builds select lists, * expands to the full column list, INSERT, EXEC and UPDATE statements expand into templates, and table aliases are generated as you type. The free Express edition has the basic suggestions only; JOIN generation, statement expansion, snippets and alias mapping start at Standard.

SQL Complete in SSMS: after typing INNER JOIN, the suggestion list offers complete join clauses with their ON conditions for the AdventureWorks2025 database.

A formatter you can set rule by rule

dbForge SQL Complete formats T-SQL to a profile you choose: several predefined styles (Default, Collapsed, Extended, Indented, Right aligned, Stack compact) or your own, edited rule by rule with a live preview. It can format as you type, on paste, or across whole folders of .sql files, and a noformat tag protects a block you've laid out by hand. Profiles can be exported, so a team can share one style. The command-line formatter, useful in a build pipeline, is Professional and Enterprise only.

The Configure Formatting Profile window: CASE expression rules on the left, a live preview of the formatted code on the right.

Refactoring, a T-SQL debugger and a search for broken objects (Professional)

dbForge SQL Complete Professional renames aliases, variables and database objects and corrects the references to them, inserts missing semicolons and adds brackets to identifiers. Its T-SQL debugger steps through stored procedures, triggers, functions and scripts from inside SSMS. Find Invalid Objects scans one or more databases for procedures and views that reference columns or tables that no longer exist, which is exactly what breaks after a careless rename.

T-SQL Code Analyzer (Enterprise)

dbForge SQL Complete Enterprise checks your code against more than 180 rules and best practices: likely performance problems, deprecated syntax, risky constructs and naming consistency, with profiles you can tailor. Warnings appear in the Output window with the file, line and rule, so you can work through them like compiler warnings.

Code analysis of a stored procedure: the Output window lists two rule warnings about DISTINCT inside an aggregate function, with line and column numbers.

A more useful results grid (Professional)

dbForge SQL Complete Professional adds a status line under the SSMS results grid that shows MAX, MIN, AVG, SUM, COUNT and DISTINCT for whatever cells you select, so you don't need to paste them into Excel to check a total. You can also search inside the results, copy data as CSV or Excel, generate INSERT or UPDATE scripts from selected rows, and open long values in a Data Viewer that shows them as text, hex, XML, HTML, JSON, PDF or an image.

Seven ListPrice cells selected in the results grid; the bar below shows their MAX, MIN, AVG, SUM, COUNT and DISTINCT values.

Safety nets: execution warnings, query history and session restore

dbForge SQL Complete keeps a searchable history of the queries you've run in every edition, including Express. Professional adds execution warnings that stop a DELETE, UPDATE, DROP or TRUNCATE without a WHERE clause on the environments you mark (production, say), reminders about open transactions, colored tabs and status bars per server (so production looks different from test), and restoring the last session or a closed tab after SSMS crashes.

A built-in AI Assistant

dbForge SQL Complete includes dbForge AI Assistant in a panel inside SSMS. Given a connected database as context, it writes queries from a plain-English request, checks and explains existing queries, suggests optimizations and explains error messages. It's in every edition. The assistant is a separate Devart service with its own plans, and a free Express tier was added in September 2026.

Where it falls short

• Updates sometimes break things. Devart releases often, and its own revision history shows the cost: the October 2026 build fixed a tab-coloring bug that had collected nearly 30 user reports, and a February 2026 build fixed slow SSMS and Visual Studio startup with logging on and SSDT documents that didn't reopen after a Visual Studio restart. If SSMS is mission-critical, wait a week before taking a new build.
• Metadata caching on large servers. SQL Complete reads the schema to make its suggestions; on servers with many databases users report a delay while it re-caches, and suggestions can lag behind schema changes until you refresh.
• It can clash with other add-ins. Running it next to another completion add-in such as SQL Prompt means two suggestion engines fighting over the same keystrokes. Pick one.
• The editions are split finely. Popular extras like grid aggregates, tab coloring and execution warnings are Professional only, so Standard often isn't the bargain it looks.

SoftwareSuggest (4.9/5 from 10 reviews)

SoftwareSuggest's verified reviewers are mostly long-time users. Its own summary of the complaints lists linked-server limitations, the price for some users, a delay while metadata re-caches, formatting flexibility and partial case sensitivity.

Joshua B. (December 2021, 5/5), who came from SQL Prompt: "It has everything I was missing from SQL Prompt, along with additional features. Considering it comes at a fraction of the price, this is a no-brainer for me." What he disliked: "Needs join clause suggestions." (Foreign-key JOIN suggestions are in the current Standard edition.)

Martin I. (November 2021, 4/5): "SQL Complete is a good extension for SQL Management Studio with many useful features. It is easy to use and of high quality. As far as I have seen, there have been no bugs." His favorite: "Join suggestions based on foreign keys."

Nick (November 2021, 5/5): "Yes, it is pricey—roughly 40 cents a day. Does it save me at least 30 minutes a day in writing short SQL statements? Yes!" He likes that the "Search data grid is highly useful and surprisingly fast," but asks Devart to "make it stop calculating sums when I highlight a lengthy column/dataset. If its over 50k records, make the sums at the bottom some sort of opt-in click."

SQLServerCentral: a three-way comparison

Sheldon Hull compared ApexSQL Complete, Redgate SQL Prompt and SQL Complete in a SQLServerCentral blog post in April 2013, so the details are old, but his reasons still describe the product: "For me, the best tool ended up being DbForge SQL Complete." On formatting: "The amount of customization offered was incredible and the end result was a powerful formatting tool with amazing results." On support: "One bug I found in the formatting was addressed with a new update within 2 weeks. That's a responsive company!" His view of SQL Prompt at the time was that "the customization offered in the formatting profiles was very limited."

G2 reviews quoted on Devart's page

Devart shows these G2 quotes on the product page, so read them as the vendor's picks.

Mark L. (Enterprise): "[dbForge] SQL Complete was a game changer. The search function added in 2023 was huge in figuring out where data resides in unfamiliar tables. Simply a great tool."

Bernard D. (Small-Business): "It's an essential tool to write T-SQL with efficiency and simplicity. My company has been using it since 2010."

David S., BI Developer (Mid-Market): "Excellent options, fast support, great value. I like the amount of customization that is offered. I can create different profiles, and because I work on multiple client systems, this comes in handy."

Ryan V., Software Developer (Small-Business): "SQL is not complete without [dbForge] SQL Complete. It is now essential to our IDE, enhancing SSMS's flexibility significantly."

The recurring themes

People keep coming back to the same three things: the JOIN and column suggestions, the depth of the formatter's settings, and value for money next to SQL Prompt. Many reviewers have used it for years. The complaints are just as consistent: it costs money where SSMS IntelliSense doesn't, metadata caching can lag on big servers, the grid aggregates can be slow on huge selections, and some updates have introduced bugs that a later build fixed.

dbForge SQL Complete vs. native SSMS IntelliSense

SSMS IntelliSense is free and suggests object names, but it doesn't build JOIN conditions, expand * or INSERT statements, format code, refactor or analyze it, and it often loses track of temp tables, CTEs and cross-database references. If you only need names, it's enough; if you write T-SQL all day, SQL Complete's free Express edition is a reasonable first step and Standard is the real upgrade.

dbForge SQL Complete vs. Redgate SQL Prompt

Both are SSMS and Visual Studio add-ins aimed at the same job: smarter completion, formatting, snippets and refactoring. Reviewers who've used both usually choose SQL Complete for its formatting options and its price; SQL Prompt is the better-known name in larger shops. Try both on your own code before committing a team to one.

Standard vs. Professional vs. Enterprise

Standard gives you the full completion engine, JOIN generation, snippets, alias mapping and the formatter. Professional adds refactoring, the debugger, Find Invalid Objects, results-grid aggregates, search and export, tab coloring, execution warnings, session restore and the command-line tools. Enterprise adds the T-SQL Code Analyzer. For most daily SSMS users Professional is the edition to get, which is why the order page starts there.

Conclusion

dbForge SQL Complete is worth $149.95 a year if you write T-SQL in SSMS every day. The JOIN suggestions and the formatter alone pay for themselves in saved minutes within weeks, and Professional's tab coloring and execution warnings protect you from the kind of mistake that ruins a Friday. The one reason to buy it is that it makes SSMS feel like a modern editor without making you leave SSMS. The main reason not to is cost against a free tool: if you write a handful of queries a week, keep the free Express edition and plain SSMS. Use the 14-day trial on your real databases, and if you buy, take Professional rather than Standard.

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