diff --git a/conda/meta.yaml b/conda/meta.yaml
index 0ccdfd9..b23ef82 100644
--- a/conda/meta.yaml
+++ b/conda/meta.yaml
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ requirements:
         - netcdf4
         - joblib
         - tqdm
-        - sqlalchemy
+        - sqlalchemy<2.0
         - ipywidgets
         - cftime>1.2.1
         - lxml
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index cc3585e..c1b4c7a 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@
         'bokeh',
         'netcdf4',
         'tqdm',
-        'sqlalchemy',
+        'sqlalchemy<2.0',
         'cftime',
         'f90nml',
         'joblib',