CSV to JSON Converter

This CSV to JSON converter turns a spreadsheet export, a database dump or any comma-, semicolon-, tab- or pipe-separated file into JSON you can use in code, an API request or a config file. It works out the delimiter for you, reads quoted values the way Excel writes them, and converts numbers and true/false into real JSON values instead of leaving everything as text.

Steps

1. Add your data: paste CSV, open a .csv / .tsv file, or paste cells copied straight from a spreadsheet.
2. Check the summary bar: it shows the delimiter that was detected, the number of records and the column names. Pick a delimiter yourself if it guessed wrong.
3. Choose the shape: objects keyed by the header, or plain arrays of values for each row.
4. Download or copy the JSON, indented or minified.

What the Output Looks Like

With the default settings, this CSV:

id,name,zip,active
1,"Khan, Ayesha",054000,true

becomes:

[
  {
    "id": 1,
    "name": "Khan, Ayesha",
    "zip": "054000",
    "active": true
  }
]

The quoted name keeps its comma, id and active become a number and a boolean, and the zip code stays a string so its leading zero survives. Choosing Array of arrays instead gives [["id","name","zip","active"],[1,"Khan, Ayesha","054000",true]], which is smaller and keeps the header as the first row.

Header Row Problems It Fixes

• Blank header cells are named column_3 and so on, by position, so no data is dropped.
• Repeated headers get a number: a second email column becomes email_2 rather than overwriting the first.
• Rows longer than the header get extra column_N keys; shorter rows are filled in, so every object has the same keys.
• The UTF-8 marker that Excel puts at the start of "CSV UTF-8" files is removed, so the first key is not polluted by an invisible character.

Semicolons, Tabs and Regional Excel Files

Excel uses the list separator set in the computer's regional settings. Where the comma is the decimal mark, as in much of Europe, it saves "CSV" files with semicolons. Detection counts the candidate delimiters in the first line, ignoring any inside quotes, and picks the most common one, so these files work without changing anything. Data copied from a spreadsheet is tab-separated and is detected the same way. Decimal commas inside values (12,5) are not converted to numbers, because JSON numbers use a dot.

Going the Other Way

To turn JSON back into a spreadsheet, use the JSON to CSV converter, which flattens nested objects into dotted columns that this tool can nest again. To tidy or check JSON before using it, paste it into the JSON formatter, and to get TypeScript types for the records, try JSON to TypeScript.

Frequently Asked Questions