Steampipe

---

title: steampipe radar_quadrant: Tools radar_ring: Assess radar_position: inner created: 2026-05-22 last_updated: 2026-05-22 related: ["Bruno", "AWSSaaSLens", "OpenTelemetryCollector", "APISpecQuickstart"]

steampipe

steampipe is an open-source tool by Turbot that exposes external APIs as queryable SQL tables via a Postgres foreign data wrapper model. It embeds a real Postgres instance (port 9193 by default) and ships a plugin system that maps cloud and SaaS API resources to foreign tables, enabling live ad-hoc queries with no ETL pipeline or intermediate storage.

Architecture

steampipe runs a local Postgres server and loads plugins as foreign data wrappers. Each plugin maps API resources to tables:

• aws_s3_bucket, aws_ec2_instance, aws_iam_user (AWS plugin)
• github_repository, github_issue, github_pull_request (GitHub plugin)
• kubernetes_pod, kubernetes_deployment (Kubernetes plugin)

SQL predicates (WHERE, JOIN) are translated into API calls at query time. Cross-API joins are supported — for example, correlating GitHub repositories with their AWS IAM resource access in a single query.

Key Capabilities

• 140+ plugins covering AWS, GCP, Azure, GitHub, Kubernetes, Terraform state, Jira, Slack, HubSpot, and more
• Standard SQL via any Postgres-compatible client or the built-in steampipe CLI
• No ETL — live data at query time
• Steampipe Cloud for hosted dashboards; self-hosted remains fully functional without it
• Apache 2.0 licensed; 21,000+ stars; actively maintained by Turbot

Radar Assessment

steampipe sits at Tools → Assess inner. The SQL-over-APIs model removes the recurring need to write one-off scripts for cloud resource auditing, cost attribution, and cross-service correlation. It pairs directly with the AWS Well-Architected SaaS Lens blip (per-tenant cost attribution queries), the OpenTelemetry Collector blip (infrastructure inventory auditing), and api-spec-quickstart (understanding API surface area before designing wrappers). Installation is a single binary plus steampipe plugin install <name>; valid API credentials are the only prerequisite. The remaining gate before Trial is at least one completed audit query run against a real cloud environment.