Tad alternative
Intact CSV Editor vs Tad
A free, MIT-licensed viewer built on DuckDB. It does not edit; it answers "let me look at this large file" with a pivot view. Intact CSV Editor does 70 things we did not find on Tad's website or in its repository — byte-for-byte saving, SQL queries and column rules among them — and 15 of the 19 features Tad lists.
70
things Intact CSV Editor does that we did not find on Tad's website or in its repository, of the 80 we compared.
15 / 19
of the features Tad lists are in Intact CSV Editor too, and 2 more in part.
1
of the features Tad lists Intact CSV Editor does not have yet.
Where Intact CSV Editor is ahead
70 things we did not find on Tad's website or in its repository.
We read the home page and the repository on 3 September 2026, and looked for each of them there.
Keeping data intact
- Keeps the byte-order mark
- Every character set compared side by side before you choose
- Keeps comment lines
- Mainframe EBCDIC code pages
- Detects the text encoding
- Quoting per column and per cell
- Refuses a character the encoding cannot hold
- Saves a file back byte for byte
- A workbook saved back with its other sheets, formats and charts
Opening files
- Delta Lake and Iceberg tables
- Separator, quotes and line endings detected and shown
- Fixed-width files, with layouts you can keep
- Rules for the files in a folder
- A file followed as it grows, like tail -f
- GeoJSON and TOML
- Tables from web pages
- JSON, JSON Lines, YAML and XML as tables
- Log files read into columns by a pattern
- OpenDocument spreadsheets
- Only part of a huge file opened
- Python pickles, Feather and MessagePack
- Quick Open by a few letters of a file's name
- NetCDF and HDF5 scientific data
- SPSS, Stata, SAS, R and MATLAB files
- Open a file from a link
- The value labels of an SPSS or Stata survey kept
- vCards and your Mac's Contacts
- Workspaces: the open files and their filters kept under a name
- Old .xls and binary .xlsb workbooks
- Excel workbooks, opened and saved as workbooks
Editing and cleaning
- Clusters of similar values, merged on request
- Duplicates judged on the columns you choose
- The file edited as text, then read back as a table
- Fill handle that continues a series
- Find and replace across every file in a folder
- JSON inside a cell, edited as a tree
- Matches lit in colours and kept for next time
- One change made in every selected cell, as several cursors would
- Sort by several columns, then back to the file's order
- Paste from the history of recent copies
- Rewrite dates and number formats
- Find and replace with regular expressions and a preview
- A column's spelling checked
- Stack several files into one
Analysis
- Compare two files, value by value
- Bars, sparklines and ranks inside the table
- Rules written as, and read from, a JSON Schema
- Look values up in another table
- Rules for each column, checked on every row
- SQL across every open file
- A web service asked about each row
Automation
- AppleScript and Shortcuts
- Files converted from the command line, with no window
- Shortcuts you can change, sequences too
- JavaScript macros
- A command palette
- Send the table through any program
Export
- Copy as Markdown, JSON, SQL, HTML and more
- Word and rich text
- Export to more than 30 formats
- HTML tables that sort themselves
- PDF export, PDF/A too
- Saved export presets
- Split a file into several
Safety
- A copy kept before every save
- Lock a file against changes
- Unsaved work recovered after a crash
- Settings kept in a small file beside the data
- Knows when another program changes the file
On the Mac
- Eight languages
Side by side
Every feature we compared.
| Feature |  Intact CSV Editor | Tad |
|---|---|---|
| Keeping data intact | ||
| Saves a file back byte for byte | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Detects the text encoding | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Mainframe EBCDIC code pages | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Keeps the byte-order mark | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Keeps comment lines | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Refuses a character the encoding cannot hold | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Quoting per column and per cell | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| A workbook saved back with its other sheets, formats and charts | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Every character set compared side by side before you choose | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Opening files | ||
| Separator, quotes and line endings detected and shown | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Excel workbooks, opened and saved as workbooks | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| OpenDocument spreadsheets | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| JSON, JSON Lines, YAML and XML as tables | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Parquet, Avro, ORC and Arrow, read and written | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| SPSS, Stata, SAS, R and MATLAB files | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| SQLite databases | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Old .xls and binary .xlsb workbooks | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Delta Lake and Iceberg tables | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| NetCDF and HDF5 scientific data | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Python pickles, Feather and MessagePack | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| GeoJSON and TOML | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| The value labels of an SPSS or Stata survey kept | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Tables from web pages | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| vCards and your Mac's Contacts | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Log files read into columns by a pattern | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Open a file from a link | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Fixed-width files, with layouts you can keep | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Millions of rows | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Rules for the files in a folder | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Only part of a huge file opened | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| A file followed as it grows, like tail -f | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Quick Open by a few letters of a file's name | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Workspaces: the open files and their filters kept under a name | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Editing and cleaning | ||
| The column's own values offered as you type | Intact CSV Editor | In part |
| Fill handle that continues a series | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| JSON inside a cell, edited as a tree | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Find and replace with regular expressions and a preview | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| A filter on every column heading, with counts | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Sort by several columns, then back to the file's order | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Duplicates judged on the columns you choose | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Rewrite dates and number formats | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Reshape: wide to long, a cell split into rows | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Stack several files into one | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Clusters of similar values, merged on request | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| One change made in every selected cell, as several cursors would | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Paste from the history of recent copies | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| The file edited as text, then read back as a table | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Find and replace across every file in a folder | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Matches lit in colours and kept for next time | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| A column's spelling checked | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Analysis | ||
| SQL across every open file | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Summaries and pivot tables with subtotals | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Statistics for every column | Intact CSV Editor | In part |
| Look values up in another table | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Compare two files, value by value | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Rules for each column, checked on every row | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Charts with trend lines, saved as SVG | Intact CSV Editor | In part |
| Bars, sparklines and ranks inside the table | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Rules written as, and read from, a JSON Schema | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| A web service asked about each row | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Automation | ||
| JavaScript macros | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Send the table through any program | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| AppleScript and Shortcuts | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| A command-line tool and links into the app | Intact CSV Editor | In part |
| Files converted from the command line, with no window | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| A command palette | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Shortcuts you can change, sequences too | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Export | ||
| Export to more than 30 formats | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| PDF export, PDF/A too | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Word and rich text | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Copy as Markdown, JSON, SQL, HTML and more | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| HTML tables that sort themselves | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Saved export presets | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Split a file into several | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Safety | ||
| A copy kept before every save | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Unsaved work recovered after a crash | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Knows when another program changes the file | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Lock a file against changes | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Settings kept in a small file beside the data | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| On the Mac | ||
| Eight languages | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
DocumentedDocumentedIn partIn part—Not in their documentationNot in their documentation·Not comparedNot compared
Choose Intact CSV Editor if…
- You need to edit and save the file, not only look at it.
- Your files must come back exactly as they came — byte for byte, in their own separator, quoting, encoding and line endings.
- You open more than CSV: Excel (old .xls too), JSON, Parquet, Delta Lake, SPSS, Stata, SAS, NetCDF, EBCDIC and more — and export to 38 formats.
- You want SQL across files, charts, column rules, file comparison and a backup before every save, in one app.
- You work on a Mac and want an app made for it, in eight languages, from a company in Zürich you can call.
TChoose Tad if…
- An analytical engine underneath (DuckDB) rather than a table in memory.
- A hierarchical pivot table as its main view.
- Connects to remote warehouses such as Snowflake, BigQuery and Athena.
| Intact CSV Editor | Tad | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Native Mac editor for CSV and 42 other kinds of data file | Free data viewer built on DuckDB |
| Runs on | Mac (macOS 14 or later) | Mac, Windows and Linux |
| Only here | 70 of the 80 features we compared | 1 of the 19 features it lists |
| Pricing | Free trial of every feature; licence price at launch | Free and open source (MIT). |
In fairness
Where Tad is ahead
1 of the 19 features Tad documents are not in Intact CSV Editor yet, and 2 are there only in part.
Not in Intact CSV Editor yet
- An analytical engine underneath, rather than a table in memory
In Intact CSV Editor in part
- A hierarchical pivot table as the main view
- Open a DuckDB database
Sources
https://www.tadviewer.com — read 3 September 2026: the home page and the repository. Product names belong to their owners. Found something out of date? Tell us.
Everything Tad documents — 19 features, and whether Intact CSV Editor does it
| Tad documents | In Intact CSV Editor |
|---|---|
| A hierarchical pivot table as the main view | Partly |
| An analytical engine underneath, rather than a table in memory | Not yet |
| Read and write Parquet | Yes |
| Read and write ORC | Yes |
| Open a DuckDB database | Partly |
| Query a remote warehouse — Snowflake, BigQuery, Athena | Not applicable |
| Column histograms for numeric columns | Yes |
| Filter with IN and NOT IN, and AND/OR between rules | Yes |
| A row count footer that separates total, filtered and visible | Yes |
| Tooltips on truncated text | Yes |
| Scientific notation as a display choice | Yes |
| Browse a folder of tabular files | Yes |
| Open a file from the command line | Yes |
| Export the filtered table | Yes |
| Copy a rectangular range for Excel or Sheets | Yes |
| Numbers aligned right, dates rendered | Yes |
| Linear scrolling through millions of rows | Yes |
| European CSV with semicolons | Yes |
| Zoom the contents | Yes |
Questions
About this comparison
Is Intact CSV Editor a good alternative to Tad?
For most people who work on a Mac, yes. It does 15 of the 19 features Tad lists, 2 more in part, and 70 things we did not find on Tad's website or in its repository — byte-for-byte saving, SQL queries and column rules among them. Where Tad is ahead is listed on this page too.
Does Intact CSV Editor have more features than Tad?
Of the 80 features of Intact CSV Editor we looked for on Tad's website or in its repository, we found 10, some of them only in part; the other 70 we did not find. The other way round, Intact CSV Editor lacks 1 of the 19 features Tad lists.
How was this comparison made?
We read the home page and the repository on 3 September 2026. Every feature Tad lists was checked against Intact CSV Editor, and every one of Intact CSV Editor's was looked for in Tad's pages. A dash means we found nothing like it there; Tad may do more than it documents. If something has changed, write to info@marketvision.ch and we will correct it.
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