Download production D1 data to local

Aug 10, 2026

When your app is live on Cloudflare, your D1 database lives at the edge. Here’s how to pull that data down to your local machine for debugging, backups, or offline development.

Copy-paste this prompt into your AI agent:

Export my production D1 database to a local SQL file and import it into my local D1.
Read the database name from wrangler.toml, then use
`wrangler d1 execute <database-name> --remote --export ./backup.sql` and
`wrangler d1 execute <database-name> --local --file ./backup.sql`.

The one-command export

wrangler d1 execute <database-name> --remote --command "SELECT * FROM users" --output users.json

This runs a SQL query against your remote D1 database and writes the results to a JSON file. Replace <database-name> with your D1 database name from wrangler.toml.

Export all tables

The starter includes four tables: users, sessions, password_resets, and uploads. To export everything:

# Export each table to JSON
wrangler d1 execute <database-name> --remote --command "SELECT * FROM users" --output export/users.json
wrangler d1 execute <database-name> --remote --command "SELECT * FROM sessions" --output export/sessions.json
wrangler d1 execute <database-name> --remote --command "SELECT * FROM password_resets" --output export/password_resets.json
wrangler d1 execute <database-name> --remote --command "SELECT * FROM uploads" --output export/uploads.json

Import into local D1

After exporting, push the data into your local D1 database:

# Apply migrations first (if local DB is empty)
wrangler d1 migrations apply <database-name> --local

# Import each table
wrangler d1 execute <database-name> --local --file export/users.json
wrangler d1 execute <database-name> --local --file export/sessions.json
wrangler d1 execute <database-name> --local --file export/password_resets.json
wrangler d1 execute <database-name> --local --file export/uploads.json

Export as raw SQL

If you prefer a SQL dump (like pg_dump), use the --export flag:

wrangler d1 execute <database-name> --remote --export ./backup.sql

This produces a .sql file with INSERT statements for all tables. To restore locally:

wrangler d1 execute <database-name> --local --file ./backup.sql

Automate it

Add a script to your package.json:

{
  "scripts": {
    "db:pull": "wrangler d1 execute <database-name> --remote --export ./backup.sql && wrangler d1 execute <database-name> --local --file ./backup.sql"
  }
}

Then bun run db:pull syncs remote to local in one step.

What about uploaded files?

D1 only stores database rows. If your app has file uploads (avatars, etc.), those live on disk or in R2 — not in D1. To download uploaded files from production, you’ll need to fetch them via HTTP or sync from your R2 bucket:

# If using R2 for uploads
wrangler r2 object get <bucket-name>/avatar-123.png ./local-uploads/avatar-123.png

Caveats

--remote hits your production database — read queries are safe, but never run DELETE or UPDATE with --remote unless you mean it.
D1 export is not a full backup — it exports data, not schema. Schema lives in your migrations/ folder, which is version-controlled.
Large exports may time out — D1 has a 30-second query duration limit. For very large tables, export in chunks with LIMIT and OFFSET.