Are you compiling an instance of the [sqlite3 command-line tool][1] to be uploaded? In that case, be sure to compile with -Os and run "strip" on the binary, before you upload it. [1]: https://www.sqlite.org/cli.html So you are mostly concerned with upload bandwidth, or with the size of the file after it lands on the remote machine? Note that the command-line tool contains lots and lots of extensions that I don't think you can reasonable omit. If the point of this exercise is to run a single "CREATE TRIGGER" statement on the remote machine, you would do well to build a custom C program that does just that one CREATE TRIGGER, link it against SQLite, and upload that. You might already have an SQLite shared library on the remote machine. So you might not even need to link it against SQLite as it might be able to use the existing shared library. Your upload could be as small as 5K or 10K. But only you can determine this, because only you know your circumstances and the problem you are trying to solve.