What is the best text-to-SQL tool in 2026?

It depends on where your data lives. As of October 25, 2026: Snowflake customers should use Cortex Analyst (billed per successful message, plus warehouse compute) or Cortex Agents, which Snowflake now recommends; Databricks customers should use Genie, whose LLM usage includes a free allowance of 150 DBUs (about $10.50 in US East) with SQL compute billed separately; teams on Postgres, BigQuery, MySQL or several warehouses should look at WrenAI (open source, or Essential Cloud at $179 a month billed annually); and teams that want a fully self-hosted stack can run DB-GPT (MIT).

Is Vanna AI still maintained?

The vanna-ai/vanna GitHub repository is archived and read-only: its last release, v2.0.2, came out on February 2, 2026, and the last push was the same day. You can still use the code, but plan for no upstream fixes; for a maintained open-source option look at WrenAI or DB-GPT.

How accurate is text-to-SQL in production?

Accuracy depends far more on the semantic layer than on the model. Tools that let you define business metrics, joins and verified example queries (Snowflake semantic views and the Verified Query Repository, Databricks Genie Agents with trusted data and metrics, WrenAI's semantic modelling) answer business questions reliably; pointing a model at a raw schema with hundreds of tables does not. Always show users the generated SQL and keep row- and column-level permissions in the database.

Can AI agents use text-to-SQL tools through MCP?

Yes. WrenAI includes an MCP server on its cloud plans and counts agent calls against the same credits as human questions, and Snowflake Cortex Agents and Databricks Genie expose APIs that agents can call. Route agents through the governed tool rather than giving them raw database credentials.

Quick Answer

Best Text-to-SQL Tools 2026: AI Data Analysts Compared

Published: October 25, 2026

The short answer

Pick the text-to-SQL tool that lives where your data and permissions already live. Accuracy comes from the semantic layer — metrics, joins and verified queries — so the platform-native tools win when you are on that platform. As of October 25, 2026:

Snowflake Cortex Analyst (and Cortex Agents) — best for Snowflake shops.
Databricks Genie — best for Databricks and Unity Catalog shops.
WrenAI — best for teams with Postgres, BigQuery, MySQL or several databases, and for embedding text-to-SQL into a product or an agent over MCP.
DB-GPT — best fully self-hosted open-source stack.
Avoid starting on Vanna — its repository was archived after v2.0.2 (February 2, 2026).

The comparison

	Snowflake Cortex Analyst	Databricks Genie	WrenAI	DB-GPT
Type	Managed, inside Snowflake	Managed, inside Databricks	Open source + cloud	Open source (MIT)
Pricing (Oct 25, 2026)	Credits per successful message (Service Consumption Table) + warehouse compute	Free 150-DBU LLM allowance (≈$10.50 US East); SQL Serverless compute billed separately	Essential Cloud $179/mo, Enterprise Cloud $559/mo (billed annually); self-hosted Enterprise Plus by quote	$0 + your models and compute
Semantic layer	Semantic views + Verified Query Repository	Genie Agents with trusted data, metrics, business rules	Semantic modelling, dbt integration	Schema + knowledge base
Governance	Snowflake RBAC	Unity Catalog	RBAC; row/column-level control on Enterprise	Your own
Agent access	REST API; Cortex Agents	Genie APIs and apps	MCP server, embedded API	API, agents framework
Status	Snowflake recommends moving to Cortex Agents	Genie One, Genie Agents, Genie Code	Active (release Oct 23, 2026)	Active (v0.8.2, Aug 26, 2026)

Pricing from the vendor documentation and pricing pages read on October 25, 2026.

1. Snowflake Cortex Analyst — best for Snowflake

Cortex Analyst is a managed, agentic text-to-SQL service exposed as a REST API. Its cost model is simple: credits are charged per message processed, as listed in Snowflake’s Service Consumption Table, and only successful (HTTP 200) responses count; token counts matter only when it is invoked through Cortex Agents. Running the generated SQL bills warehouse compute on top. Accuracy comes from semantic views and a Verified Query Repository of approved question-to-SQL pairs, and Snowflake ships an evaluation feature to test both. Note that Snowflake’s own docs now recommend transitioning to Cortex Agents, which support every Cortex Analyst capability “with higher answer quality” — start new projects there. Not available in mainland China.

2. Databricks Genie — best for Databricks

Genie is a family: Genie One for business users asking questions in natural language, Genie Agents where data teams define trusted data, metrics and business rules, and Genie Code for developers. Answers are governed by Unity Catalog. Databricks’ pricing page states that a free allowance of 150 DBUs (about $10.50 in US East) covers Genie LLM usage only, and that Genie compute such as SQL Serverless is billed separately — so the real cost driver is warehouse uptime, not the questions themselves. Set aggressive auto-stop on the warehouse Genie uses.

3. WrenAI — best across databases and for embedding

WrenAI (Canner) is an open-source “GenBI” engine with a semantic modelling layer, dbt integration and an MCP server, active on GitHub (wren-core release October 23, 2026). Cloud pricing is per credit with unlimited members and projects: Essential Cloud $179 a month billed annually (13,200 annual credits, which WrenAI estimates at about 3,000 questions a month on a small model), Enterprise Cloud $559 a month (24,000 annual credits, row- and column-level security, audit logs, evaluation framework), and self-hosted Enterprise Plus licensed by concurrent sessions. Human users and agents calling over MCP draw on the same usage, so a company-wide rollout does not multiply the licence.

4. DB-GPT — best fully self-hosted

DB-GPT (MIT, v0.8.2 released August 26, 2026, still committed to in October) bundles text-to-SQL, a multi-agent framework and data-app tooling you run on your own models. Choose it when data and prompts must stay on your network and you have the engineering time to build the semantic layer yourself.

What about Vanna?

Vanna was the popular Python library for “train on your schema, ask in English”. On GitHub the vanna-ai/vanna repository is archived; v2.0.2 (February 2, 2026) is the last release. Existing deployments keep working, but new projects should pick a maintained tool.

How to choose

Data in Snowflake → Cortex Agents / Cortex Analyst with semantic views.
Data in Databricks → Genie Agents, with a small, curated set of tables per space.
Several databases, or text-to-SQL inside your SaaS → WrenAI.
Air-gapped or open-weight models only → DB-GPT.
Whatever you pick: define 20–50 verified questions before launch, show the SQL, and keep permissions in the database, not in the prompt.

Related: Databricks Genie One vs Snowflake vs Fabric Copilot and best AI tools for data analysis. Model prices for self-hosted stacks are in our current API prices table.

Last verified: October 25, 2026. Pricing from Snowflake and Databricks documentation and WrenAI’s pricing page; repository status from GitHub.