---
title: Migrate data to TimescaleDB from InfluxDB | Tiger Data Docs
description: Migrate data into your self-hosted TimescaleDB installation using the Outflux tool
---

You can migrate data to TimescaleDB from InfluxDB using the Outflux tool. [Outflux](https://github.com/timescale/outflux) is an open source tool built by Tiger Data for fast, seamless migrations. It pipes exported data directly to self-hosted TimescaleDB, and manages schema discovery, validation, and creation.

Warning

Outflux works with earlier versions of InfluxDB. It does not work with InfluxDB version 2 and later.

## Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have:

- A running instance of InfluxDB and a means to connect to it.
- A self-hosted TimescaleDB instance and a means to connect to it.
- Data in your InfluxDB instance.

## Procedures

To import data from Outflux, follow these procedures:

1. [Install Outflux](#install-outflux)
2. [Discover, validate, and transfer schema](#discover-validate-and-transfer-schema) to self-hosted TimescaleDB (optional)
3. [Migrate data to TimescaleDB](#migrate-data-to-timescaledb)

## Install Outflux

Install Outflux from the GitHub repository. There are builds for Linux, Windows, and MacOS.

1. **Go to the releases section of the Outflux repository**

   Open the [Outflux releases page](https://github.com/timescale/outflux/releases).

2. **Download the latest compressed tarball for your platform**

3. **Extract it to a preferred location**

   Note

   If you prefer to build Outflux from source, see the [Outflux README](https://github.com/timescale/outflux/blob/master/README.md) for instructions.

To get help with Outflux, run `./outflux --help` from the directory where you installed it.

## Discover, validate, and transfer schema

Outflux can:

- Discover the schema of an InfluxDB measurement
- Validate whether a table exists that can hold the transferred data
- Create a new table to satisfy the schema requirements if no valid table exists

Note

Outflux’s `migrate` command does schema transfer and data migration in one step. For more information, see the [migrate](#migrate-data-to-timescaledb) section. Use this section if you want to validate and transfer your schema independently of data migration.

To transfer your schema from InfluxDB to Timescale, run `outflux schema-transfer`:

Terminal window

```
outflux schema-transfer <DATABASE_NAME> <INFLUX_MEASUREMENT_NAME> \
--input-server=http://localhost:8086 \
--output-conn="dbname=tsdb user=tsdbadmin"
```

To transfer all measurements from the database, leave out the measurement name argument.

Note

This example uses the `postgres` user and database to connect to the self-hosted TimescaleDB instance. For other connection options and configuration, see the [Outflux GitHub repo](https://github.com/timescale/outflux#connection).

### Schema transfer options

Outflux’s `schema-transfer` can use 1 of 4 schema strategies:

- `ValidateOnly`: checks that self-hosted TimescaleDB is installed and that the specified database has a properly partitioned hypertable with the correct columns, but doesn’t perform modifications
- `CreateIfMissing`: runs the same checks as `ValidateOnly`, and creates and properly partitions any missing hypertables
- `DropAndCreate`: drops any existing table with the same name as the measurement, and creates a new hypertable and partitions it properly
- `DropCascadeAndCreate`: performs the same action as `DropAndCreate`, and also executes a cascade table drop if there is an existing table with the same name as the measurement

You can specify your schema strategy by passing a value to the `--schema-strategy` option in the `schema-transfer` command. The default strategy is `CreateIfMissing`.

By default, each tag and field in InfluxDB is treated as a separate column in your TimescaleDB tables. To transfer tags and fields as a single JSONB column, use the flag `--tags-as-json`.

## Migrate data to TimescaleDB

Transfer your schema and migrate your data all at once with the `migrate` command.

For example, run:

Terminal window

```
outflux migrate <DATABASE_NAME> <INFLUX_MEASUREMENT_NAME> \
--input-server=http://localhost:8086 \
--output-conn="dbname=tsdb user=tsdbadmin"
```

The schema strategy and connection options are the same as for `schema-transfer`. For more information, see [Discover, validate, and transfer schema](#discover-validate-and-transfer-schema).

In addition, `outflux migrate` also takes the following flags:

- `--limit`: Pass a number, `N`, to `--limit` to export only the first `N` rows, ordered by time.
- `--from` and `to`: Pass a timestamp to `--from` or `--to` to specify a time window of data to migrate.
- `chunk-size`: Changes the size of data chunks transferred. Data is pulled from the InfluxDB server in chunks of default size 15 000.
- `batch-size`: Changes the number of rows in an insertion batch. Data is inserted into a self-hosted TimescaleDB database in batches that are 8000 rows by default.

For more flags, see the [GitHub documentation for `outflux migrate`](https://github.com/timescale/outflux#migrate). Alternatively, see the command line help:

Terminal window

```
outflux migrate --help
```