About
About CSV Beacon
Free tools for understanding a CSV file: what is in it, what it says and whether it is fit to use.
What it is
CSV Beacon turns a CSV file into answers: a chart, a profile of every column, the result of a SQL query, a pivot table, a group-by summary or a validation report. It is aimed at anyone who receives data as CSV and needs to make sense of it quickly, without installing anything or pasting it into an online spreadsheet.
How it works
Everything runs in your browser. Files are read with the File API, parsed with PapaParse in a background worker, and analysed by the page's own code. Charts are drawn as SVG by CSV Beacon itself. The SQL tool loads SQLite compiled to WebAssembly (sql.js) from this site when you first open a file there. Nothing you open, paste or type is uploaded.
Once a page has loaded, its tools keep working without a network connection. The SQL engine is the one exception: it is downloaded when you open your first file on the SQL page, and works offline from then on.
Sister site
CSV Beacon is about understanding data. To view, edit, clean or convert CSV files, use our sister site CSV Lark.
Analytics
The site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts page views without cookies or cross-site tracking and never receives what you type, paste or drop into the tools.
Questions about how data is handled are answered on the privacy page.