What does a SQL minifier actually do?

It removes every unnecessary character from a SQL statement — line breaks, runs of spaces and tabs, indentation and (optionally) comments — collapsing the query onto a single line while keeping it syntactically identical. The result runs exactly the same but is smaller, which is handy for embedding queries in JSON, log lines, config files, shell scripts or code where a multi-line string is awkward.

Will minifying change what my query returns?

No. Minifying only touches whitespace and comments, never the tokens that matter to the database. The tool tokenises your SQL first, so it knows the difference between a space it can delete and a space that lives inside a string literal. The parsed meaning of the statement is unchanged.

Does it preserve spaces inside string literals?

Yes — that is the whole point of tokenising rather than running a blind find-and-replace. Anything inside single quotes, double-quoted identifiers or MySQL backticks is copied through verbatim, so a value like 'keep these spaces' survives intact.

Can it strip comments?

Yes. Strip comments is on by default and removes both line comments (-- … and

What is the keyword-case option for?

Many teams standardise on uppercase keywords (SELECT, FROM, WHERE) for readability, while others prefer lowercase. The minifier can uppercase, lowercase or leave keyword casing untouched. It only re-cases recognised SQL keywords and common functions — your table names, column names and string values are never altered.

Is my SQL sent anywhere?

No. The minifier is 100% client-side JavaScript. Your query is processed in your browser, is never uploaded to any server, and your last input plus your chosen options are saved only in this browser's local storage so the tool remembers them next time.

SQL Minifier — Gera Tools

A SQL minifier takes a nicely indented, multi-line query and squeezes it down to the smallest valid one-line form. It strips the line breaks, runs of spaces and tabs, and (optionally) the comments that make SQL readable for humans but bloat it when you need to store or transmit the statement as a single string. The result is byte-for-byte equivalent in meaning — it just takes up far less space. This is the mirror image of pretty-printing: where a formatter expands SQL for reading, a minifier compacts it for machines.

How it works

Naively deleting whitespace breaks SQL, because some spaces are load-bearing (GROUP BY must keep its gap) and some spaces live inside string literals where they must never be touched. This tool avoids that by tokenising the statement first. It walks the SQL character by character and classifies each run as whitespace, a line or block comment, a single-quoted string, a double-quoted or backtick identifier, a number, a keyword or a punctuation token — correctly handling doubled-quote escapes like '' and "".

Once the input is a clean stream of tokens, minifying is safe: whitespace tokens are dropped, comments are removed or normalised based on your settings, recognised keywords are re-cased, and a single space is re-inserted only where two tokens would otherwise fuse into one (two words, a word next to a number, and so on). Because string and identifier tokens are copied through untouched, the spacing inside your quoted values is always preserved. Finally the tool reports input vs. output byte counts, the percentage saved, and how many statements, comments and string literals it found.

Example

Paste a formatted analytics query like this:

SELECT u.country_code,
       COUNT(*) AS users   -- per country
FROM users AS u
WHERE u.status = 'active'
GROUP BY u.country_code;

With uppercase keywords and strip comments on, you get a single compact line:

SELECT u.country_code,COUNT(*) AS users FROM users AS u WHERE u.status = 'active' GROUP BY u.country_code;

The stats panel shows roughly a 40-60% byte reduction on typical formatted queries — and the value 'active' keeps its quotes and content exactly. Everything is computed locally in your browser; no query is ever uploaded.