JSON to CSV UTF-8
JSON is UTF-8 by spec.
Native JSON tool
JSON to CSV
UTF-8 encoding by default
Optional BOM for Windows Excel
Preserves international characters
Handles emoji and special symbols
- Cost
- Free tier
- Sign-up
- Not required
- Processing
- Tool-specific
- Privacy
- Clearly disclosed
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Embed code
<iframe
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width="100%"
height="780"
frameborder="0"
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Why UTF-8 is the right default for CSV
UTF-8 is the universal encoding of the modern web. RFC 8259 defines JSON as UTF-8, and every modern JSON parser produces UTF-8 strings on parse. The natural CSV output to match is UTF-8 because any other encoding would require lossy or escape-heavy transcoding of values. FixTools writes UTF-8 directly, which means every character that can be represented in your source JSON is preserved exactly in the CSV.
The BOM (byte-order mark) is a three-byte signature (EF BB BF) at the start of a UTF-8 file that signals the encoding to readers. Excel on Windows uses the BOM to detect UTF-8 reliably; without it, Excel falls back to the system code page and mangles accented characters. macOS Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, and most text editors handle UTF-8 with or without BOM. The default in FixTools is BOM-on, which is the safe choice for Windows-Excel-bound files. Switch to BOM-off for Unix pipelines where the BOM is sometimes treated as part of the first field.
Emoji and other supplementary-plane Unicode characters (those above U+FFFF, encoded as surrogate pairs in UTF-16) work correctly because UTF-8 represents them as four-byte sequences without any special escaping. A row containing a customer name with an emoji icon (some forms allow them now) preserves the emoji exactly in the CSV.
Common encoding traps in non-UTF-8 contexts include Windows-1252 (the default code page for older Windows systems), ISO-8859-1 (the historical Latin-1 encoding), and Shift_JIS (the Japanese Windows code page). Files written in those encodings render correctly only on systems with matching locale settings, which is why UTF-8 is genuinely better as a portable encoding. If a downstream tool absolutely requires a non-UTF-8 encoding, transcode the CSV after download using iconv or a similar tool.
How to use this tool
Output UTF-8 CSV with optional BOM. Preserves all Unicode characters from the source JSON including accents and emoji.
How It Works
Step-by-step guide to json to csv utf-8:
- 1
Paste JSON
Paste JSON containing any Unicode characters.
- 2
Confirm UTF-8 BOM setting
BOM on for Windows Excel compatibility. BOM off for Unix pipelines.
- 3
Download
Download the file. Unicode characters in your data travel through correctly.
- 4
Verify in spreadsheet
Open the CSV in your spreadsheet and confirm international characters render correctly.
Real-world examples
Common situations where this approach makes a real difference:
International customer list
A SaaS company exports customer JSON with names from many countries (José, Müller, 田中). UTF-8 with BOM produces a CSV that renders all names correctly in Excel on Windows.
Product names with currency
A retail export has product names with currency symbols (€, £, ¥). UTF-8 preserves them through the CSV without escape sequences.
User-generated content with emoji
A social platform exports user posts as JSON with emoji content. UTF-8 carries the emoji into the CSV intact.
Multilingual survey data
A global survey produces JSON with responses in many scripts (Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic, CJK). UTF-8 preserves every script faithfully.
Pro tips
Get better results with these expert suggestions:
Always BOM-on for Windows Excel users
If your recipient might be on Windows Excel, BOM-on is the safe default. macOS Excel and Google Sheets tolerate the BOM, so there is no downside to including it for mixed audiences.
BOM-off for Unix pipelines
Tools like cut, awk, and sort that read line-by-line may treat the BOM as part of the first field. For Unix-only consumers, BOM-off is cleaner.
Verify with a hex dump if encoding is suspect
If you doubt the encoding, run xxd file.csv | head on the file. UTF-8 with BOM starts with EF BB BF. UTF-8 without BOM starts with the first character's bytes directly. Other encodings show different byte patterns.
Transcode if downstream needs non-UTF-8
For rare legacy consumers requiring Windows-1252 or another code page, transcode after download with iconv -f utf-8 -t windows-1252 file.csv > file-1252.csv. Some characters may be lost in transcoding.
Frequently asked questions
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