Is there a version of the Northwind database I can open in a browser without installing anything?

Yes. Bionic Forms hosts Microsoft's Northwind sample rebuilt as a working app at https://bionicforms.com/demo. It opens in one click with no download, no install, no account and no email. Most other versions of Northwind are a script or a file you must run against a database server first.

What is the Northwind database?

Northwind is a sample database Microsoft created for teaching and demos. It holds the sales records of a fictional company, Northwind Traders, which imports and exports specialty foods: customers, orders, order lines, products, suppliers, categories, employees and shippers, with the relationships between them.

Can I edit the data, or is it read-only?

It is editable. The workspace is yours alone, nobody else sees it, and you can change records, add new ones, delete them and undo it all from Trash. It is cleared after about a day unless you keep it with a free account.

Can I run SQL queries against it?

No. This is not a SQL console. It is Northwind rebuilt as an application, with forms, table and board views, filters, grouping and related records. If you need a SQL playground, use one of Microsoft's own scripts against SQL Server or PostgreSQL instead.

← Bionic Forms

Northwind, running in your browser

No download, no install, no account, no email · checked 31 August 2026

Every other Northwind is a file you have to run first — a .sql script against a server, a .bak to restore, an Access template to open in Access. This one is a link.

Open Northwind →

What you get

Microsoft made Northwind to teach with: the sales records of a fictional specialty-food importer called Northwind Traders. This is that data, rebuilt as a working application rather than a set of tables:

Collection	What is in it
Customers	Companies, contacts, addresses
Orders	Dates, shipping, the customer and employee behind each one
Order details	The lines: product, unit price, quantity, discount
Products	Prices, stock, the supplier and category each belongs to
Suppliers, Categories, Employees, Shippers	The rest of the model, linked up

Open a customer and their orders are on the page. Open an order and its lines are on the page. That is the part a table dump cannot show you, and it is the reason Northwind exists as a teaching set at all: the relationships are the lesson.

Things worth trying

Edit something. The workspace is yours, nobody else can see it, and Trash undoes anything.
Filter, group and sort from the toolbar above any view — that state is yours, not a change to the app everyone else sees.
Follow a link. From a product to its supplier, from an order line back to the order.
Ask the assistant to add a field or a view, and watch it change the app rather than answer a question about it.

The honest limits

It is not a SQL console. There is no query box and no SELECT. If a SQL playground is what you came for, Microsoft's own scripts against SQL Server or PostgreSQL are the right tool and this is not.
It is cleared after about a day unless you keep it with a free account. Nothing you do here is billed and nothing is shown to anyone.
It is our product, holding Northwind. That is the point — you are looking at what an app built this way feels like — but you should know it rather than work it out.
We are pre-launch, with five signups who are not us, none of whom has typed a record, and nobody paying. The status page for that is /access.

Why bother rebuilding it

Northwind is the database almost everyone evaluating a tool already knows, which makes it the fairest thing to show. You are not being sold a demo built to flatter the product; you are looking at a model you can already check against your own memory of it.

Open Northwind →

Brought your own data instead? Paste a Google Sheet link or drop a .csv on /access and get the same thing built from your records — every tab read, not just the first (what happens to each tab). Or tell us what your current system does and we will build a working version and show you. No fee and no card — what we build fits the free plan.

Northwind and Microsoft Access are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation; we are not affiliated with Microsoft. The Northwind dataset is Microsoft’s own published sample, used here as the teaching set it was made to be.