To get the dump from a deployed environment: First, create a backup: heroku pg:backups:capture --app [app name] Then, download the backup: heroku pg:backups:download [backup id] --app [app name] Then, reset the local database: rake db:drop db:create db:migrate Then, load the backup into the database: pg_restore --verbose --clean --no-acl --no-owner -h localhost -U [username] -d [database name] latest.dump