CSV vs TSV: Commas or Tabs? Which to Use (Free Converter)

CSV vs TSV is commas vs tabs. Both store a table as plain text, one row per line. CSV (comma-separated values) is the more widely supported, but values containing commas, quotes or line breaks must be wrapped in quotes. TSV (tab-separated values) uses tabs, which almost never appear in real data, so it rarely needs quoting and pastes straight into a spreadsheet. Switch between them with the free CSV to TSV converter, which keeps every value in its column.

The same table in both formats

name	city	note
Ada	London, UK	Said "hi"
Ravi	Pune	two lines

As CSV:

name,city,note
Ada,"London, UK","Said ""hi"""
Ravi,Pune,"two
lines"

As TSV (tabs shown as →):

name→city→note
Ada→London, UK→"Said ""hi"""
Ravi→Pune→"two
lines"

Look at "London, UK". In CSV it needs quotes, because otherwise the comma would split it into two columns. In TSV it doesn't; a comma is just a character. The values with quote marks and line breaks are still quoted in both, which is what our converter does to keep them safe.

CSV vs TSV side by side

	CSV	TSV
Separator	Comma (,), or semicolon in some regions	Tab
Quoting needed	Often: commas in addresses, numbers like 1,200, text	Rarely: only tabs, quotes or line breaks in values
Human readability	Columns don't line up	Columns roughly line up in a text editor
Paste into Excel or Google Sheets	Lands in one column unless imported	Splits into columns automatically
Support in apps and APIs	Nearly universal	Common, slightly less universal
Common standard	RFC 4180 describes the usual quoting rules	A simple IANA format: no tabs inside fields
Typical file extension	.csv	.tsv, .tab or .txt

How quoting works in CSV

Most CSV readers follow the rules described in RFC 4180:

1. Fields are separated by commas, and rows by line breaks.
2. A field containing a comma, a double quote or a line break must be wrapped in double quotes.
3. A double quote inside a quoted field is written twice: Said "hi" becomes "Said ""hi""".

These rules are simple, but hand-made or exported files often break them: an unquoted address, a stray quote mark, a missing closing quote. That's when columns shift and data lands in the wrong place. Our converter reads quotes properly and reports problems such as "A quoted value that starts on line 3 is never closed. Check for a missing "."

The semicolon twist

In many European countries, and anywhere the comma is the decimal mark (3,5 for three and a half), Excel saves and opens "CSV" files with semicolons instead. So a CSV from a German colleague may look like name;price with 3,5 inside. The free CSV to TSV converter detects comma, semicolon and pipe separators automatically, and the status line tells you what it found, for example "3 rows, read as semicolon-separated." Converting to TSV removes the ambiguity, because a tab means the same thing everywhere.

Which tools prefer which

• Spreadsheets. Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice open both, but on the clipboard they speak TSV. Copy a range of cells and paste it into a text editor: you get tabs. That's why TSV pastes perfectly into a sheet.
• Databases and analytics. Import tools for most databases accept CSV by default and a tab delimiter as an option. Bioinformatics and many command-line workflows lean toward TSV, since cut, awk and sort split on tabs easily.
• Web apps and APIs. CSV is the usual "Export" and "Import" format: contact lists, bank statements, e-commerce product feeds.
• Code. Every major language has a CSV library. For TSV, the same libraries usually work with the delimiter set to a tab.

When to choose CSV

• You're sending data to another system, app or person and don't know what they use. CSV is the safe default.
• A tool's import page asks for CSV specifically.
• You'll open it in Excel by double-clicking. (Mind the Excel quirks; see the tips below.)

When to choose TSV

• Your data is full of commas: addresses, descriptions, prices like 1,200, free-text comments.
• You want to paste data into a spreadsheet and have it split into columns straight away.
• You're processing data on the command line.
• You need the file to be readable at a glance in a plain text editor.

Converting between them

1. Open the free CSV to TSV converter.
2. Choose CSV to TSV or TSV to CSV.
3. Paste your data or click Open a file. For CSV, Detect works out the separator; you can also choose Comma, Semicolon or Pipe.
4. Click Copy result or Download to save data.tsv or data.csv. ⇄ Swap sends the result back the other way.

If your data starts as JSON, the JSON to CSV converter builds a CSV (or a semicolon-separated file) from an array of objects. Our guide to converting JSON to CSV for Excel walks through it.

Spreadsheet surprises affect both

Neither format stores data types. A column of postcodes, phone numbers or product codes is just text in the file, and the spreadsheet decides what it "looks like" when it opens it. That's how leading zeros and long numbers get changed. Our tips on stopping Excel mangling CSV data cover the fixes.

Convert yours now

Paste a CSV with awkward commas or a TSV you need to send, and convert it in one step. The free CSV to TSV converter handles quotes and line breaks correctly, works on your device, and never uploads your data.