Is SQL Worth Learning in 2026?
By Owen Middleton · Updated October 2026 · We ran the examples on PostgreSQL 17
Yes. SQL is worth learning in 2026. In two US studies of data analyst job posts, employers asked for SQL in about half of the posts. In the 2026 Stack Overflow survey, SQL was near the top of the list of languages.
Some employers ask for Excel more often than SQL. In one study of 328 job descriptions in India, employers asked for Excel in 81% and for SQL in 60%. Each study is in the table below.
SQLMaxx teaches SQL for free, so we get a benefit when you decide to learn SQL. Each figure from a study, survey or ranking has a link to its source.
Is SQL still in demand in 2026?
Yes. In every study below, employers asked for SQL in 45% to 60% of the job posts. The Excel figures are different in each study.
| Study | Where | Sample | SQL | Excel | Published | Publisher sells |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 365 Data Science | US, Indeed | 855 data analyst job posts | 52.9% | 43.9% (375 posts)* | May 2024 | data science courses |
| 365 Data Science | US, Glassdoor | 1,355 data analyst job posts | 50% | 41.3% | March 2025 | data science courses |
| AccioJob | India, companies that hire through AccioJob | 328 job descriptions: data analyst, business analyst, data engineer and data scientist | 60% | 81% | July 2026 | job training and hiring |
| Oxylabs | US | more than 800,000 job posts from January 2025 to March 2026 that ask for a programming language | 45% (Python: 46%) | not counted | May 2026 | web data and proxies |
* 365 Data Science gives Excel as 50.5% "among postings that require MS Office". By the study's own counts, that is 375 of 742 Microsoft Office tool mentions. Excel is in 375 of all 855 posts, which is 43.9%. 365 Data Science also counts 112 posts in which employers ask for "Microsoft Office", which includes Excel.
The authors used different countries, different job roles and different job sites. They also counted Excel in different ways. In the two US studies of data analyst posts, employers named SQL in more posts than Excel. In the AccioJob sample from India, employers asked for Excel in more posts. That sample also has data engineer and data scientist jobs.
Oxylabs counted only programming languages, so its study has no Excel figure.
Is SQL outdated?
No. SQL is still relevant in 2026. The SQL standard is ISO/IEC 9075. According to the PostgreSQL documentation, ISO and IEC published new versions of the standard after SQL-92, and the most recent version is SQL:2023.
On the DB-Engines ranking per database model, relational databases had 71.0% of the popularity score in October 2026. PostgreSQL was 4th on the DB-Engines ranking. DB-Engines gave PostgreSQL 45.56 more points than one year before, the largest increase in the top ten. The other three systems in the top four lost points in the same year.
DB-Engines measures popularity from sources such as web mentions, searches and job offers. It does not measure use.
Stack Overflow asked about languages in its 2026 Developer Survey. Of the people who answered the question about languages, 58.4% did "extensive development work" in SQL in the past year. The figures for JavaScript, HTML/CSS and Python were 62.0%, 58.2% and 58.0%. Stack Overflow counts only the people who chose to answer.
On the TIOBE Index in October 2026, SQL was 9th, at 1.97%. TIOBE counts search engine results for each language. It does not count use at work.
Will AI replace SQL jobs?
We found no study about this question yet. On the benchmarks, the best AI systems are now good at SQL. Their SQL still has errors.
- On the BIRD benchmark in October 2026, the top system has a score of 82.95%. Human data engineers and database students have a score of 92.96%.
- On the Spider 2.0 leaderboard in October 2026, the top system has a score of 96.70% on the Spider 2.0-Snow set of 547 tasks. On the Spider 2.0-Lite set, the top score is 76.23%.
There is a second risk. If each analyst does more work with AI, a company can need fewer analysts. Neither benchmark measures this risk.
On BIRD, the top system makes more errors than the human testers. PostgreSQL does not always stop a query that has a logic error. It can run the query and return a number that seems correct. In our view, someone who can read SQL must check each query before people use the result, also a query from an AI tool.
Find the error in this SQL query
The question: how many customers placed an order? The customers table has one row for each
customer. The orders table has one row for each order, with the customer_id of
the customer. Both tables are from a small sample store with 70 customers:
Schema · ecommerce2 tables? = nullable
First, count the customers:
SELECT COUNT(*) AS customers
FROM customers;| customers |
|---|
| 70 |
PostgreSQL runs this query without an error:
SELECT COUNT(*) AS customers_with_orders
FROM customers AS c
JOIN orders AS o ON o.customer_id = c.id;| customers_with_orders |
|---|
| 200 |
The number is larger than the number of customers, so it cannot be correct. With the JOIN, PostgreSQL returns one row for each order. A customer with five orders is in the result five times, so PostgreSQL counts that customer five times. Run this query to see five of the customers with the most rows in the result:
SELECT c.id, c.name, COUNT(*) AS orders
FROM customers AS c
JOIN orders AS o ON o.customer_id = c.id
GROUP BY c.id, c.name
ORDER BY orders DESC, c.id
LIMIT 5;| id | name | orders |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alice Nguyen | 5 |
| 2 | Bob Chen | 5 |
| 6 | Frank Wilson | 5 |
| 8 | Henry Brown | 5 |
| 10 | Jack Miller | 5 |
Use COUNT(DISTINCT c.id) to count each customer one time:
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT c.id) AS customers_with_orders
FROM customers AS c
JOIN orders AS o ON o.customer_id = c.id;| customers_with_orders |
|---|
| 62 |
Run the query with the error here. Then correct it. For the rules of a JOIN, read the lesson INNER JOIN explained.
SELECT COUNT(*) AS customers_with_orders FROM customers AS c JOIN orders AS o ON o.customer_id = c.id;
Who should learn SQL, and who can skip it?
Learn SQL if you want a job with data from a database. Examples are data analyst, data scientist and data engineer.
You can skip SQL for now in these cases:
- Employers in your area ask for Excel and not for SQL.
- You use only dashboards and reports that other people make.
- You use a framework, such as an ORM, and you never write SQL yourself.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics expects database administrator and architect jobs to grow 4% from 2025 to 2035. That is near the average for all jobs. It expects data scientist jobs to grow 35%. The BLS names SQL as a skill for database administrators. It does not name SQL on its data scientist page.
For jobs that need only SQL, read "can you get a job with just SQL".
Start your first SQL lesson
Learn SELECT, WHERE, JOIN and GROUP BY first. Next, learn CTEs, for example with the free CTE lesson.
To start, use a SQL course that checks your answers. SQLMaxx Learn is free, and you can start lesson 1 in your browser with no account. You write each query in a real PostgreSQL database.
More questions about SQL
Why learn SQL in 2026?
SQL is the language that you use to get data from a relational database. In the Oxylabs count of more than 800,000 US job posts for a programming language, SQL was the top language in 38 states. Python was the top language in the US as a whole, 46% to 45%. Source: Oxylabs.
Is SQL still relevant in 2026?
Yes. In October 2026, the four most popular database systems on DB-Engines were all relational systems that use SQL. Source: DB-Engines Ranking.
Is SQL good to learn as a first language?
Both SQL and Python are common first choices. In the 2025 Stack Overflow survey, 71.8% of the people in the group "Learning to code" did extensive work in Python. For SQL, the figure was 45.4%. Source: Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025.