Database log explorer for managed Postgres and MySQL

The moment that drives someone to look for this is a production incident at 2am where their managed database crashed, the logs are empty or truncated, and they have no way to download the relevant 30-minute window without clicking through a clunky console or writing a custom AWS CLI script. This is a regular occurrence, not a one-off.

The gap persists for a structural reason: cloud database vendors have every incentive to make logs visible enough that users don't churn, but no incentive to make logs so good that you stop relying on their managed layer. Deep log visibility gives users more rope to go around the managed service, which is the opposite of what the vendor wants. So the log UI stays mediocre forever — good enough not to lose customers, bad enough to never be a selling point.

What users actually complain about: there's no 'download logs' button for a specific time frame, crash events produce empty or meaningless log output, and filtering is so weak that finding the one slow query or failed connection in a noisy log stream means scrolling manually. Exporting to an external log aggregator introduces a new class of troubleshooting problems — users have to configure log shipping, deal with format inconsistencies across providers, and then pay for ingesting logs they mostly never read.

This is a business rather than a feature because the problem recurs every time there's an incident, every time a developer needs to audit query patterns, and every time a team onboards a new managed database instance. A DBA or backend engineer who's burned enough hours on this will pay a flat monthly amount to have a tool that connects directly to RDS, Aurora, or Aiven, surfaces logs in a filterable timeline, and lets them download a clean CSV or JSON export for any time window in two clicks. The need doesn't go away when the incident ends — the next one is already coming.

What to build

Build a web app that connects to managed PostgreSQL and MySQL instances via read-only credentials, pulls and indexes log streams from RDS, Aurora, and Aiven in real time, and lets engineers filter by severity, time window, or query pattern and export any slice as CSV or JSON without touching a CLI or configuring log shipping.

Where to start

Start with Aiven for PostgreSQL specifically, where log tooling complaints are the loudest and the native UI is weakest, so the contrast between your experience and theirs is sharpest in the first five minutes.

The hard part

Getting engineers to trust a third-party tool with database credentials — even read-only — requires either a very short time-to-value demo or a self-hosted deployment option, which immediately doubles your support and infrastructure complexity.

How it makes money

Monthly subscription per database instance connected, starting around $29/instance/month, with a free tier for one instance to drive self-serve signups.