What is TSV?

TSV (Tab-Separated Values) is a plain-text format for storing tabular data. Each row is a line, and columns within a row are separated by tab characters (\t). TSV is similar to CSV (Comma-Separated Values) but uses a tab as the delimiter, which avoids conflicts with commas that naturally appear in text fields. It is widely supported by spreadsheet applications, databases, and data-processing tools.

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight text format for representing structured data as arrays and objects. When data is stored as an array of objects in JSON, each object corresponds to a row and its keys correspond to column headers — making conversion between TSV and JSON straightforward.

Tool description

This tool converts data bidirectionally between TSV and JSON formats. Paste TSV to get a JSON array of objects, or paste a JSON array of objects to get TSV output with a header row.

Features

  • Bidirectional conversion: Convert TSV to JSON or JSON to TSV with a single toggle.
  • Header row handling: Automatically uses the first TSV row as column names when converting to JSON, and object keys as headers when converting to TSV.
  • Nested object support warning: Expects a flat array of objects for JSON-to-TSV; nested structures are not supported.
  • Syntax highlighting: Both input and output panels use a code editor with appropriate highlighting.
  • Empty line skipping: Blank lines in TSV input are ignored during parsing.

Use cases

  • Spreadsheet to API: Export data from Excel or Google Sheets as TSV, then convert it to JSON for use in an API payload or configuration file.
  • Database exports: Transform TSV exports from databases or data warehouses into JSON for further processing with JavaScript or Python.
  • Data migration: Convert JSON datasets into TSV for import into tools that require tab-delimited input, such as certain ETL pipelines or spreadsheet imports.