# VisiData

26 Hacker News commenters recommended VisiData and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free terminal tool for exploring, filtering and sorting large files and databases quickly. Critics agree that editing fields it doesn't understand can lose data.

## Why people recommend it

- Handles large files well (4 comments): "I prefer visidata as the program stays running while searching and navigating through large files" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47945876)) "you can use visidata for poking around databases of any size, really" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47079958)) "The only tool that really works for me with millions of rows csv's" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47658642))
- Powerful, favorite tool (4 comments): "It's one of the most powerful applications I've used in years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47674550)) "visidata is my favorite spreadsheet." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47459612)) "it's a marvelous piece of software" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46267464))
- Works with many data sources (3 comments): "Visidata is an amazing multitool for exploring tabular data that supports many data sources." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45938939)) "VisiData is superb. It can work with website tabular data too; great for scraping." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47662687)) "you can use visidata for poking around databases of any size, really" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47079958))
- Exploring, filtering and sorting data (3 comments): "It's an incredibly useful piece of software for data wrangling and exploration." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47927003)) "VisiData is great to not only peek into the file but filter it, sort" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45962277)) "killer data swiss army knife" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47457513))

## What people warn about

- Can mangle or lose data (3 comments): "editing the parts VD didn't understand lead to data loss" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46267981)) "it didn't play nice with fields like %sort (they'd disappear if you re-saved the file)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46268947)) "it mangled the file if you had anything more than a basic set of records" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46266135))

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "VisiData", https://hackerapproved.com/p/visidata/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).