---
title: Getting Started
sidebar_class_name: getting-started-icon
description: Getting started with MotherDuck serverless cloud data warehouse.
---
import IconGrid from '@site/src/components/IconGrid';
import HorizontalLayout from '@site/src/components/HorizontalLayout';
import HorizontalDivider from '@site/src/components/HorizontalDivider';
import VideoPlayer from '@site/src/components/VideoPlayer';
import CalloutBox from '@site/src/components/CalloutBox';
import styles from './getting-started.module.css';

# MotherDuck documentation

<div className={styles.intro}>
  <div className={styles.videoWrapper}>
    <VideoPlayer
      playbackId="RMsZivbKBJxQT3TBMJVOAsWa5cBb5WokOs1esw1CAjw"
      title="MotherDuck Product Tour"
    />
  </div>
  MotherDuck is a serverless cloud data warehouse built on DuckDB. It's designed for fast, interactive SQL analytics without the infrastructure overhead.
  Build a modern data warehouse for BI, or power customer-facing analytics in your app.
  Develop and iterate locally, share and scale in the cloud when you need it.
</div>

<IconGrid
  title="Choose your path"
  titleIcon="duckfeet"
  titleIconColor="duck"
  items={[
    {
      icon: "howto",
      title: "MotherDuck Tutorial",
      description: "Build an end-to-end workflow: load data, transform it, and share results",
      link: "/docs/getting-started/e2e-tutorial/"
    },
    {
      icon: "database",
      title: "Data Warehousing Overview",
      description: "Build a modern warehouse with ingestion and transformation",
      link: "/docs/getting-started/data-warehouse/"
    },
    {
      icon: "cfa",
      title: "Customer-Facing Analytics Overview",
      description: "Build analytics apps with the MotherDuck Wasm client",
      link: "/docs/getting-started/customer-facing-analytics/"
    },
    {
      icon: "robotducks.svg",
      title: "Talk to Your Data with AI",
      description: "Analyze your data with natural language using the remote MCP Server",
      link: "/docs/getting-started/mcp-getting-started/"
    },
    {
      icon: "dives.svg",
      title: "Create Visualizations with Dives",
      description: "Generate interactive, shareable dashboards from natural language prompts",
      link: "/docs/key-tasks/ai-and-motherduck/dives/"
    }
  ]}
  variant="square"
/>

<CalloutBox
  title="Try MotherDuck for free"
  description="Sign up and start querying in minutes. No credit card required."
  buttonText="Get Started Free"
  buttonHref="https://app.motherduck.com"
/>

<IconGrid
  title="Connect to MotherDuck"
  titleIcon="integrations"
  subtitle="Connect to MotherDuck using official drivers and APIs for various programming languages."
  items={[
    {
      icon: "python.svg",
      title: "Python",
      link: "/docs/getting-started/interfaces/client-apis/python/installation-authentication/"
    },
    {
      icon: "duckfeet",
      iconColor: "duck",
      title: "MotherDuck UI",
      link: "/docs/getting-started/interfaces/motherduck-quick-tour/"
    },
    {
      icon: "nodejs.svg",
      title: "Node.js",
      link: "https://duckdb.org/docs/stable/clients/node_neo/overview.html"
    },
    {
      icon: "wasm.svg",
      title: "WebAssembly",
      link: "/docs/sql-reference/wasm-client/"
    },
    {
      icon: "golang.svg",
      title: "Golang",
      link: "/docs/integrations/language-apis-and-drivers/go-driver/"
    },
  ]}
  viewAllLink="/docs/integrations/language-apis-and-drivers/"
  viewAllText="View all clients and drivers →"
/>

<HorizontalDivider />
<HorizontalLayout>
  <IconGrid
    title="Load data to MotherDuck"
    subtitle="Load your data from other databases and object storage"
    items={[
      {
        icon: "aws_s3.svg",
        title: "S3",
        link: "/docs/integrations/cloud-storage/amazon-s3/"
      },
      {
        icon: "postgresql.svg",
        title: "PostgreSQL",
        link: "/docs/key-tasks/loading-data-into-motherduck/loading-data-from-postgres/"
      },
      {
        icon: "gcp_bigquery.svg",
        title: "BigQuery",
        link: "/docs/integrations/databases/bigquery/"
      }
    ]}
    viewAllLink="/docs/integrations/ingestion/"
    viewAllText="View supported ingestion tools →"
  />

  <IconGrid
    title="Integrate with your data stack"
    subtitle="Connect with a lot of common tools from the modern data stack."
    items={[
      {
        icon: "dbt-icon.svg",
        title: "dbt",
        link: "/docs/integrations/transformation/dbt/"
      },
      {
        icon: "fivetran.svg",
        title: "Fivetran",
        link: "https://fivetran.com/docs/destinations/motherduck#motherduck"
      },
      {
        icon: "tableau-software.svg",
        title: "Tableau",
        link: "/docs/integrations/bi-tools/tableau/"
      },
    ]}
    viewAllLink="/docs/integrations/"
    viewAllText="View all integrations →"
  />
</HorizontalLayout>

<HorizontalDivider />

<IconGrid
  title="Common tasks"
  subtitle="Some common tasks and use cases to get you started."
  items={[
    {
      icon: "integrations",
      title: "Connect to Power BI",
      description: "Use the DuckDB Power Query connector for Power BI",
      link: "/docs/integrations/bi-tools/powerbi/"
    },
    {
      icon: "best-practices",
      title: "Authenticate",
      description: "Log in or use access tokens for CLI and drivers",
      link: "/docs/key-tasks/authenticating-and-connecting-to-motherduck/authenticating-to-motherduck/"
    },
    {
      icon: "cli",
      title: "Query from DuckDB CLI",
      description: "Install the DuckDB CLI and connect directly to MotherDuck",
      link: "/docs/getting-started/interfaces/connect-query-from-duckdb-cli/"
    },
    {
      icon: "python",
      title: "Use SQLAlchemy",
      description: "Connect to MotherDuck with Python & SQLAlchemy",
      link: "/docs/integrations/language-apis-and-drivers/python/sqlalchemy/"
    },
    {
      icon: "book",
      title: "Connect to DuckLake",
      description: "Use DuckLake to build a data lake on top of your own files",
      link: "/docs/integrations/file-formats/ducklake/"
    }
  ]}
  variant="square"
/>