Convert TSV to CSV Online — Free

How to convert TSV to CSV

1. 1

   Add your TSV file

   Drop or select a .tsv file. Files up to 50MB process locally in your browser — nothing uploaded.

2. 2

   Run the conversion

   Your TSV parses in the browser with tab as the delimiter. Each row re-emits with commas as the delimiter; values containing commas, quotes, or newlines are automatically double-quoted and escaped per RFC 4180. Header row is preserved as the first output line.

3. 3

   Download your CSV

   One click saves the result as a .csv file. Your original file stays on your device.

Why convert TSV to CSV?

Many tools and databases accept CSV but not TSV. PostgreSQL COPY, MySQL LOAD DATA INFILE, SQLite .import, Pandas read_csv, Excel, Google Sheets, most BI tools (Tableau, Looker, PowerBI), and countless data pipeline tools default to CSV. While TSV is common in bioinformatics, scientific workflows, and some SQL dumps, CSV is the broader interchange standard.

Common TSV to CSV use cases

• Migrating a bioinformatics TSV export (GTF, BED-like, or lab instrument output) to CSV for Excel analysis
• Converting a database SELECT INTO OUTFILE TSV into CSV for loading into a different SQL database that prefers commas
• Preparing a TSV from a Unix/CLI pipeline (cut, awk output) for import into Google Sheets or a non-technical analyst's spreadsheet
• Translating an Elasticsearch or Splunk TSV export into CSV for downstream analytics tools that expect comma delimiters

What file size to expect

A 10,000-row TSV of roughly 800 KB becomes a CSV of 820-880 KB — only slightly larger because CSV needs to quote fields containing commas (which TSV didn't need to). For data without commas inside fields, output size is nearly identical.

Technical notes: TSV → CSV

TSV parsing uses tab (0x09) as the sole delimiter; newlines separate rows. CSV output follows RFC 4180: fields containing commas, double-quotes, or newlines get double-quoted, and embedded double-quotes within quoted fields are escaped by doubling ('' → ""). Character encoding is preserved — UTF-8 TSV becomes UTF-8 CSV. Empty fields become empty CSV fields (two commas in a row). Trailing newlines are normalized.

Compatibility and browser support

CSV output per RFC 4180 works in every mainstream CSV parser: Excel (with correct locale for decimal separator), Google Sheets, LibreOffice Calc, PostgreSQL COPY, MySQL LOAD DATA INFILE, Pandas read_csv, R read.csv, Node csv-parse, and every cloud data tool (Snowflake COPY INTO, BigQuery LOAD DATA, Athena).

TSV vs CSV

Frequently Asked Questions