SQL Server Developer Edition has for years provided a free data platform to test and develop applications in an environment that has all SQL Server features available at no cost to the organizations that use it. So long as these SQL Servers do not host production workloads, then this edition is ideal for database development.
Starting in SQL Server 2025, a new edition is available for installation: SQL Server Developer Standard Edition. This article dives into this edition, the problems it solves, and why it is a great addition for development teams that use SQL Server!
This is something people in the community have agitated over for years. It’s great that Developer edition has all of the features of Enterprise, but that can be a problem when you build your apps against the equivalent of Enterprise and deploy them to Standard, as there’s a risk you’re using an Enterprise-only feature but don’t know it.
Dev on Dev Ent and deploy to STD in prod and it runs slower