SQL to CSV Converter

Sometimes all you have is a .sql dump — from a backup, a WordPress export or a colleague — and you just need the rows in a spreadsheet. This converter reads INSERT INTO … VALUES statements, including multi-row inserts produced by mysqldump and pg_dump --inserts, and turns them into CSV without needing a database server.

1. Paste the INSERT statements or drop a .sql file.
2. Column names are read from the INSERT column list; without one, columns are named column_1, column_2…
3. Check the row and column counts below the editors.
4. Download the CSV, or switch the target to Excel or JSON.

Example

INSERT INTO `customers` (`id`, `name`, `city`, `created_at`) VALUES
(1, 'Fatima Zahra', 'Fes', '2026-01-15 10:20:00'),
(2, 'John O\'Connor', 'Dublin', NULL),
(3, 'Lee, Min-jun', 'Seoul', '2026-03-02 08:05:41');

id,name,city,created_at
1,Fatima Zahra,Fes,2026-01-15 10:20:00
2,John O'Connor,Dublin,
3,"Lee, Min-jun",Seoul,2026-03-02 08:05:41

The MySQL-style escaped quote in O\'Connor is decoded, the comma inside Lee, Min-jun is quoted in the CSV, and NULL becomes an empty cell.

What the parser understands

• Single-row and multi-row INSERT INTO … VALUES (…), (…); statements, as many as you like.
• Column lists with backticks, double quotes or square brackets.
• Strings with doubled quotes ('') or backslash escapes (\'), and N'…' / E'…' prefixes.
• NULL, TRUE/FALSE and numbers; function calls such as NOW() are kept as text.
• Everything else in a dump — CREATE TABLE, SET, comments — is ignored.

One table at a time

A full database dump contains inserts for many tables. Because a CSV file holds a single table, rows from all INSERT statements are combined. Paste the statements for one table at a time — in most dumps they are grouped under a comment such as -- Dumping data for table `customers`.

If you have database access

When the database is running, exporting with a query is faster and avoids parsing altogether — see the commands below. The converter is most useful when you only have the dump file, or when you cannot install database tools.

Convert SQL to CSV in code

For one-off files the tool above is quickest. To automate the same task in a script or pipeline, these snippets are a good starting point.

Export directly from the database

# MySQL / MariaDB (tab-separated)
mysql -u user -p -D mydb --batch -e "SELECT * FROM customers" > customers.tsv

# PostgreSQL
psql -d mydb -c "\copy (SELECT * FROM customers) TO 'customers.csv' WITH (FORMAT csv, HEADER true)"

# SQLite
sqlite3 -header -csv app.db "SELECT * FROM customers;" > customers.csv

Frequently asked questions

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