Major Version Summary
All major versions run side-by-side. For users of paid editions, major version updates are optional and chargeable.
(You can find out here what major versions your license covers, and the cost of upgrading.)
Note that you can always run an older verion than you purchased, side-by-side, at no extra cost.
Active Versions
| Major version |
First released |
Supported frameworks |
Current release |
| LINQPad 8 |
2023 |
.NET 3.1*, 5.0*, 6.0, 7.0. 8.0, 9.0 |
8.6.6
|
| LINQPad 5 (SE) |
2023 |
.NET Framework 4.7, 4.8 |
5.52.01
|
*limited support - .NET 6, 7, 8 or 9 must also be installed
End-of-Life Versions
| Major version |
First released |
Supported frameworks |
Final version |
| LINQPad 7 |
2021 |
.NET 3.1, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0 |
7.8.10 |
| LINQPad 6 |
2019 |
.NET 3.x, 5.0 |
6.15.12 |
| LINQPad 5 (legacy) |
2015 |
.NET Framework 4.6, 4.7, 4.8 |
5.48.0 |
| LINQPad 4 |
2010 |
.NET Framework 4.0, 4.5 |
4.59 |
| LINQPad 2 |
2007 |
.NET Framework 3.5 |
2.48 |
Major new features in LINQPad 8:
- Full support for latest C#, F# and VB compilers, .NET 8.0/9.0 and Win 10/11 SDK
- Transaction isolation level support for database querying via a toolbar dropdown or Util.TransactionIsolationLevel
- A brand-new Excel export engine that generates native .XLSX files with features such as Tables and AutoFilter
- The ability to create Excel spreadsheets programmatically via an inbuilt API
- Auto-description when dumping, via a toolbar option or DumpTell()
- The ability to Dump Avalonia controls inside LINQPad and have them render in the output window
- Automatic restoration of unchanged queries when restarting the application
- Upgraded interactive authentication engine, with support for latest authentication protocols
- Support for EF Core 8 and its new features, including DateOnly/TimeOnly column generation
- Improved appearance and dark-theme rendering
Major new features in LINQPad 7:
- Full support for latest C#, F# and VB compilers, .NET 6.0/7.0 and Win 10/11 SDK
- The ability to run natively on ARM64 Windows machines
- Updated drivers for EF Core, that support all EF Core versions from 3.0 to 7.0
- New launchers for command-line support that allow FX version selection
- Integrated support for benchmarking, using the BenchmarkDotNet library.
- DateOnly and TimeOnly support with date and time mappings in LINQ-to-SQL
- New Util.Dif engine with text and list diffing
- Improved NuGet package management, and automatic package vulnerability monitoring
- New methods to pivot and merge data prior to display
- Improved JSON support
- Improved startup time
Major new features in LINQPad 6:
- Full support for C# 9, VB 16, .NET Core 3 and .NET 5 Desktop, with the ability to reference .NET Core assemblies and netcore NuGet packages.
- The ability to reference other .linq files, via the #load directive.
- A new back-end for the NuGet package manager, with improved compatibility, performance and disk usage, and full support for reference assemblies.
- A new built-in database driver that supports Oracle, Postgres, MySQL and SQLite, via the latest Entity Framework Core libraries.
- Enhanced tooling, including autocompletion on file paths, navigation across My Extensions and #load-ed query members,
editor bookmarks and an integrated Roslyn Quoter.
- Support for namespace declarations, and a new Execution Selection engine that can access other methods and types in the query.
- An upgraded extensibility model for writing data context drivers that makes
publishing a driver as simple as uploading a NuGet package.
- Support for soft cancellation, via this.QueryCancelToken.
Major new features in LINQPad 5:
- Full support for C# 7 and VB 15.
- Background code-checking - both parsing and binding errors show with red squigglies. Resolved symbols
display in turquoise, and unresolved symbols in red. Compilation is quicker, because most of the work is done in advance.
- (Pro/Premium Editions) Automatic code formatting, 'Rename Symbol', 'Jump to Definition', and 'Find References'.
- (Pro/Premium Editions) Autocompletion for VB, including member listings, parameter info, quick info, background compilation, smart-tags, and auto-formatting.
- (Pro/Premium Editions) Autocompletion for F#, including member listings, parameter info and quick info.
- Built-in F# compiler (so fsc.exe is not required) with full F# autocompletion.
- Built-in Roslyn Syntax Tree Visualizer. The syntax tree for your query appears automatically as an output tab, and you can
invoke it programmatically with .DumpSyntaxTree() or .DumpSyntaxNode().
- Authenticated feed support within the NuGet package manager.