JSON Viewer Online

How to view JSON online

1. Load the JSON. Paste it, drag a .json file onto the box, or click Open file. Files over 5 MB are read straight into the viewer and not put in the text box, which keeps the page responsive.
2. Read the tree. The first two levels open automatically. Click a caret to fold or unfold a branch, or use Level 1/2/3 to set how much is open.
3. Find what you need. Type in the search box to highlight every key or value that contains the text. The arrows jump between matches and open the branches around each one.
4. Copy the path. Click any node and the path bar shows where it lives, for example $.data.items[0].id. Copy the path, or copy that node's value as formatted JSON.

JSON reader: open and read .json files

You do not need an editor or IDE to read a JSON file. This JSON reader opens .json, .geojson, .har (browser network exports), source maps and plain-text files that contain JSON. Everything is read locally with the browser's File API. Common formats read well here:

• API responses and exports: Postman collections, Stripe or Shopify exports, Firebase dumps, Google Takeout, and Twitter/X or Instagram data downloads.
• Config and manifests: package.json, composer.json, tsconfig.json (comments are handled by View anyway), and appsettings.json.
• Logs in JSON Lines: .jsonl/.ndjson files hold one object per line, which is not a single JSON document. The viewer offers to repair them into an array so you can browse every line.

If a file does not parse, you get the line and column of the first error, and a View anyway button. That button runs the same clean-up as the JSON formatter and cleaner: it removes comments and trailing commas, fixes quotes and closes truncated brackets. Then the file opens as a tree.

JSON tree viewer: tree, raw and table views

The three views show the same parsed data in different ways:

Strings are shown as JSON strings, so a line break inside a value appears as \n. That way you can see exactly what the data contains. URLs inside strings are clickable. In very long strings the first 300 characters are shown, and the full value is always available with Copy value.

JSON navigator: copy the path to any value

When you know where a value is, you usually want to use it in code, a test or a query. The path bar shows the location of the selected node in four notations. Pick the one that matches where you will paste it:

Array indices start at zero in every notation, so the first element is [0]. Keys that are not plain identifiers, such as those with spaces, dashes or a leading digit, switch to bracket or quoted form automatically.

Search inside JSON

Search matches keys and values without regard to case, including the text of numbers, true, false and null. It works on the parsed data, not the DOM, so it also finds matches in branches you have not opened yet. Moving to a match opens its parent branches. The counter shows your position, for example 3 / 41. Press Enter for the next match and Shift+Enter for the previous one.

Viewing large JSON files

Many online viewers build the whole tree up front and freeze on a 20 MB file. This viewer renders branches only when you open them, and very long arrays 200 items at a time. On a typical laptop, a 50 MB file with a million values parses in a second or two and opens straight away. The real limit is your browser's memory, usually a few hundred megabytes of JSON. Expand all stops after 20,000 nodes so a huge document cannot lock up the tab. For files in the gigabyte range, use a streaming tool on the command line:

jq '.items | length' big.json         # count items without opening an editor
jq -c '.items[] | select(.status=="failed")' big.json | head
jless big.json                          # interactive terminal JSON viewer

Read JSON in code

JavaScript

const res  = await fetch('/api/orders');
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data.items?.[0]?.id);           // optional chaining for missing branches
console.dir(data, { depth: null });          // Node.js: print the full tree

Python

import json
with open("data.json", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    data = json.load(f)
print(data["items"][0]["id"])
print(json.dumps(data, indent=2)[:2000])     # peek at the first 2,000 characters

jq

jq 'keys' data.json                  # top-level keys
jq '.items[0]' data.json             # first record
jq 'paths | map(tostring) | join(".")' data.json | head   # list every path

Frequently asked questions