SQL, charts, and 3D visualization for the files your other tools gave up on. CSV, JSONL, Parquet, Excel & SQLite. 100% on your Mac.
When I'm going through reams of logs I prefer a delightful UX over the CLI and this tool filled that gap for me. I looked far and wide for a fast and beautiful app before having the pleasure of coming across this one.
Purpose-built for professionals who work with massive structured data every day.
EV charging stations, medical devices, vending machines, industrial sensors. Query millions of telemetry records with SQL — spot anomalies, track uptime, analyze usage patterns.
Suricata, Zeek, CloudTrail, EDR telemetry. Hunt across 5GB+ daily logs with full SQL — SELECT src_ip, COUNT(*) FROM data WHERE alert.severity <= 2
Explore Parquet, CSV, Excel, and SQLite files with full SQL. JOINs, CTEs, window functions — all running locally at native speed. No pipelines, no infra.
A complete data analysis workbench — built from the ground up for speed and privacy.
Full SQL — SELECT, JOIN, GROUP BY, CTEs, window functions. Multi-threaded C++ opens 5GB+ files in seconds and queries in milliseconds.
Line, bar, scatter & pie charts with dual Y-axis, per-series types, hover tooltips, and PNG export. Quick presets auto-detect the best visualization for your data.
Built-in Lua 5.4 engine with full SQL access, chart control, and S3 configuration. Automate analysis and share repeatable workflows.
Visualize your data as an interactive 3D city. Auto-maps columns to building height, color, and districts. Timeline slider for temporal data.
Built-in tools for everyday text work — strip whitespace, beautify JSON, validate XML with error line highlighting, and format SQL. Side-by-side input/output with synced scroll.
Instant column statistics — min, max, mean, median, standard deviation, nulls, and unique counts. One click from any query result to understand your data's shape.
CSV, TSV, JSONL, Parquet, gzip, Excel (.xlsx), SQLite, and DuckDB. Auto-detects delimiters and schemas. Plus S3 cloud access and CSV/TSV/PNG export.
Open multiple files simultaneously, switch between datasets instantly. Keyboard shortcuts for every action — transform, query, chart, and navigate without touching the mouse.
100% on-device processing. No internet required. Zero telemetry. Every byte stays on your machine. Optional S3 access for cloud data.
A completely new way to explore structured data — see patterns that tables and charts can't reveal.
Every row becomes a building. Height, color, and district are auto-mapped from your columns. Spot outliers, clusters, and trends at a glance — then click any building to drill into the raw data.
How ColumnLens stacks up against the alternatives.
| Metric | CLI / jq / grep | Elasticsearch | ColumnLens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open 5GB file | Minutes (streaming) | Hours (ingest pipeline) | ~3 seconds |
| SQL queries | None | Query DSL (not SQL) | Full DuckDB SQL |
| Charting | None | Kibana (separate tool) | Built-in charts + export |
| 3D visualization | None | None | City View with timeline |
| Text tools | sed / awk | None | JSON, XML, SQL beautifier |
| Scripting | Shell scripts | Painless / Watcher | Lua with SQL access |
| File formats | Text only | JSON (ingest required) | 9 formats + S3 |
| Setup time | None | Days + infrastructure | Download and run |
| Memory usage | Varies | 8GB+ recommended | <750MB |
| Data privacy | Local | Server / cloud | 100% on-device |
| Cost | Free | $2,000+/year | Free / $12.99 Pro |
"The ability to filter deeply nested sensor data across millions of records has saved me hours every week. This is the tool I didn't know I needed."
"The nested field flattening for Suricata log analysis is incredibly valuable. It turns what used to be a painful jq workflow into something visual and fast."
One price. All features. No subscriptions.
ColumnLens supports CSV (with auto-delimiter detection), TSV, JSONL, JSONL.gz (gzip compressed), Apache Parquet, Excel (.xlsx), SQLite databases, and DuckDB files. You can also query files directly from S3-compatible storage. Nested JSON objects of any depth are automatically flattened into dot-notation columns.
ColumnLens includes a full DuckDB SQL engine. You can write standard SQL — SELECT, WHERE, JOIN, GROUP BY, CTEs, window functions, aggregations — all running locally against your data. Results can be charted or exported to CSV/TSV.
ColumnLens is available for macOS (Apple Silicon native). The free version handles files up to 100 MB. Pro is available on the Mac App Store for $12.99 (one-time purchase) for unlimited file sizes.
The app uses multi-threaded C++ with DuckDB's optimized query engine and columnar storage. It keeps memory usage under 750MB even for 5GB+ files with 12M+ rows. Query results are paged for instant responsiveness.
No. ColumnLens is a native desktop app with zero internet requirements. No telemetry, no analytics, no cloud processing. Every byte stays on your machine. The optional S3 feature connects directly to your buckets — no intermediary servers.
Line, bar, scatter, and pie charts with dual Y-axis support, per-series chart type overrides, hover tooltips, and PNG export. The app auto-detects the best chart type based on your data — time series, categorical, or numeric distributions.
The built-in Lua 5.4 engine has full access to the SQL engine, chart configuration, and S3 setup. You can automate queries, build repeatable analysis workflows, and configure visualizations programmatically. Scripts run in a sandboxed environment for safety.
City View turns your data into an interactive 3D city. Each row becomes a building — height and color are auto-mapped from your numeric and categorical columns, and rows are grouped into districts. A timeline slider lets you scrub through temporal data with play/pause animation. It's a unique way to spot outliers, clusters, and trends that are hard to see in tables or charts.
The Text Toolkit is a built-in workspace for everyday text transformations — strip whitespace, beautify JSON, validate XML, and format SQL. It features side-by-side input/output panels with synced scrolling and line numbers. XML validation highlights error lines directly in the output with red markers and descriptive error messages.
Yes. The free version includes all features — SQL, charts, Text Toolkit, Lua scripting, all 9 formats — with a 100MB file size limit. No account required. Just download and open a file.
Unlimited file sizes, all v2.x updates, and priority email support. Available on the Mac App Store — no subscriptions, pay once, own it. The free version includes all features — SQL, charts, Text Toolkit, statistics, Lua scripting — with a 100 MB file size limit.
Yes. If you're buying for a SOC team, security department, or organization, we offer volume licensing with direct invoicing. Contact us for team and enterprise pricing — we're happy to work with procurement teams and can provide invoices, POs, and W-9s as needed.
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