Caxton alternative
Intact CSV Editor vs Caxton
A native Mac text editor for files of ten gigabytes that grew a CSV grid — a memory-mapped document with a parsed grid over it. Intact CSV Editor does 29 things we did not find in Caxton's documentation — SQL queries, Parquet files and column rules among them — and 31 of the 75 features Caxton lists.
29
things Intact CSV Editor does that we did not find in Caxton's documentation, of the 57 we compared.
31 / 75
of the features Caxton lists are in Intact CSV Editor too, and 22 more in part.
19
of the features Caxton lists Intact CSV Editor does not have yet.
Where Intact CSV Editor is ahead
29 things we did not find in Caxton's documentation.
We read the features page, the manual, the shortcut and menu references, benchmarks, changelog 1.0.0–1.7.2, the guides, pricing and privacy, and the menus of version 1.7.2 on 10 September 2026, and looked for each of them there.
Keeping data intact
- Mainframe EBCDIC code pages
- Refuses a character the encoding cannot hold
Opening files
- Tables from web pages
- OpenDocument spreadsheets
- Parquet, Avro, ORC and Arrow, read and written
- SQLite databases
- SPSS, Stata, SAS, R and MATLAB files
- Open a file from a link
- vCards and your Mac's Contacts
- Excel workbooks, opened and saved as workbooks
Editing and cleaning
- The column's own values offered as you type
- Clusters of similar values, merged on request
- Reshape: wide to long, a cell split into rows
- Stack several files into one
Analysis
- Look values up in another table
- Summaries and pivot tables with subtotals
- Rules for each column, checked on every row
- SQL across every open file
Automation
- AppleScript and Shortcuts
- A command-line tool and links into the app
- JavaScript macros
- 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
- Saved export presets
- Split a file into several
On the Mac
- Eight languages
Side by side
Every feature we compared.
| Feature |  Intact CSV Editor | Caxton |
|---|---|---|
| Keeping data intact | ||
| Saves a file back byte for byte | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Detects the text encoding | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Mainframe EBCDIC code pages | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Keeps the byte-order mark | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Keeps comment lines | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Refuses a character the encoding cannot hold | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Quoting per column and per cell | Intact CSV Editor | In part |
| Opening files | ||
| Separator, quotes and line endings detected and shown | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| 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 | In part |
| Parquet, Avro, ORC and Arrow, read and written | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| SPSS, Stata, SAS, R and MATLAB files | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| SQLite databases | 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 | Documented |
| Open a file from a link | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Fixed-width files, with layouts you can keep | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Millions of rows | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Rules for the files in a folder | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Editing and cleaning | ||
| The column's own values offered as you type | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Fill handle that continues a series | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| JSON inside a cell, edited as a tree | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Find and replace with regular expressions and a preview | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| 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 | Documented |
| Duplicates judged on the columns you choose | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Rewrite dates and number formats | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Reshape: wide to long, a cell split into rows | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| 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 |
| Analysis | ||
| SQL across every open file | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Summaries and pivot tables with subtotals | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| 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 | Documented |
| Rules for each column, checked on every 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 | —Not in their documentation |
| A command palette | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Shortcuts you can change, sequences too | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Export | ||
| Export to more than 30 formats | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| PDF export, PDF/A too | Intact CSV Editor | In part |
| 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 | In part |
| Unsaved work recovered after a crash | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Knows when another program changes the file | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Lock a file against changes | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Settings kept in a small file beside the data | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| 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 think of the file as a table first: types, filters on headings, SQL, rules and exports to 33 formats.
- 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, JSON, Parquet, SPSS, Stata, SAS, EBCDIC and more — and export to 33 formats.
- You want SQL across files, 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.
CChoose Caxton if…
- Opens a 10 GB file at once and stays under 200 MB of memory — Intact CSV Editor reads the table into memory.
- Follows a growing file like tail -f, keeps change marks since the last save, and shows the file as text beside the grid.
- Batch replace, find in files, a minimap and quick open — the tools of a text editor.
| Intact CSV Editor | Caxton | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Native Mac editor for CSV and 30+ data formats | Large-file text editor with a CSV grid |
| Runs on | Mac (macOS 14 or later) | Mac |
| Only here | 29 of the 57 features we compared | 19 of the 75 features it lists |
| Pricing | Free trial of every feature; licence price at launch | Sold by the month, the year or once; read-only when a licence lapses; three Macs per licence (its pricing page). |
In fairness
Where Caxton is ahead
19 of the 75 features Caxton documents are not in Intact CSV Editor yet, and 22 are there only in part.
Not in Intact CSV Editor yet
- Open a 10 GB file at once and stay under 200 MB — mapped, indexed in the background
- Follow a growing file, like
tail -f, with the filter still working - Recent searches, and searches saved with their options, exchanged as JSON
- Batch Replace — hundreds of pairs, each with its own case, word and pattern switches, in one pass or in order, read from CSV or TSV
- Find in Files — a folder searched without opening its files, and replaced across with a preview and
.bakcopies - The file as text beside the grid — fixed as text, read as a grid
- Two columns of one name told apart in every column picker
- Change marks — what was edited since the save, the next change, one change put back
- and 11 more in the full list below
In Intact CSV Editor in part
- Open only a byte range, or only the end, of a file too big to want whole
- Escape sequences in a plain query —
\n,\t,\xHH,\uHHHH - Find All as a list — every match with its context, grouped by capture or by column, sorted, exported
- A file of values dropped on the filter, one a line, each an OR condition
- Sorts saved by name and applied again
- and 17 more in the full list below
Sources
https://caxton.app — read 10 September 2026: the features page, the manual, the shortcut and menu references, benchmarks, changelog 1.0.0–1.7.2, the guides, pricing and privacy, and the menus of version 1.7.2. Product names belong to their owners. Found something out of date? Tell us.
Everything Caxton documents — 75 features, and whether Intact CSV Editor does it
| Caxton documents | In Intact CSV Editor |
|---|---|
| Open a 10 GB file at once and stay under 200 MB — mapped, indexed in the background | Not yet |
| Open only a byte range, or only the end, of a file too big to want whole | Partly |
| Scrollable and editable while the rest is still being read | Yes |
Follow a growing file, like tail -f, with the filter still working | Not yet |
| UTF-8 checked, a likely legacy encoding offered, the file reopened in another | Yes |
| Rules by file pattern — encoding, wrap and tab width per glob | Yes |
| Find: case, whole word, regular expressions, in the selection, backwards, an exact count | Yes |
Escape sequences in a plain query — \n, \t, \xHH, \uHHHH | Partly |
| A pattern that would run for ever cannot stop the window | Yes |
| Recent searches, and searches saved with their options, exchanged as JSON | Not yet |
| Find All as a list — every match with its context, grouped by capture or by column, sorted, exported | Partly |
| Batch Replace — hundreds of pairs, each with its own case, word and pattern switches, in one pass or in order, read from CSV or TSV | Not yet |
Find in Files — a folder searched without opening its files, and replaced across with a preview and .bak copies | Not yet |
| Replace All as one undo step, shown before it is done | Yes |
| Filter conditions chained with AND and OR, AND binding tighter, each negatable, saved by name | Yes |
| A file of values dropped on the filter, one a line, each an OR condition | Partly |
| Extract, delete or bookmark what the filter shows | Yes |
| Severity levels, Go to Time, stack traces kept with their record, incident windows | Not applicable |
| Sort as text, case-sensitive bytes, natural, number, currency with accounting negatives, or date; then by; stable | Yes |
| Sorts saved by name and applied again | Partly |
| Fill Series… — linear or growth, dates by the second to the year with month ends kept, weekday and month lists, a stop value, empty cells only | Yes |
| Fill down, up, right and left | Yes |
| Remove duplicate rows by chosen columns, keeping the first, the last or none, or bookmarking them | Partly |
| A column's values counted | Yes |
Filter by a column's values, with counts, the most frequent first, (blank) included | Yes |
| Right-click a cell: Filter to, Exclude, Greater Than, Less Than | Partly |
| Split, combine, extract a column, transpose, number the rows, change the delimiter, flatten line breaks, quote all or only what needs it, pad short rows, cut fixed widths with a live preview | Yes |
| Short rows shown dimmed and repaired in one step | Partly |
| The file as text beside the grid — fixed as text, read as a grid | Not yet |
| Raw mode: a value as it is stored, quotes and all | Partly |
Go to 5000 or 5000:12 | Yes |
| Selection statistics in the status bar | Yes |
| Hide and freeze columns, fit them, rename one by double-clicking, its settings following it when it moves | Yes |
| A blank sheet, and typing past the last row or column grows the table | Yes |
| Two columns of one name told apart in every column picker | Not yet |
| Upper, lower, title, sentence and toggle case; camel, Pascal, snake, kebab, constant, dot and space case | Partly |
| Change marks — what was edited since the save, the next change, one change put back | Not yet |
| Compare offered when the file changes underneath, beside Reload and Keep Mine | Not yet |
| Numbers: step, arithmetic, zero padding, bases 2, 8, 10 and 16 | Partly |
| Base64, URL encoding, HTML, XML and JSON escaping, Unicode escapes, ROT13 | Partly |
| Unicode normalisation — NFC, NFD, NFKC, NFKD | Not yet |
| Hashes: SHA-256, SHA-512, SHA-1, MD5 | Partly |
| Statistics: bytes, characters, words, lines, reading time | Yes |
| Insert the date and time | Yes |
| Words completed from the document | Yes |
| Snippets with tab stops, comments toggled, brackets paired, folding, syntax colouring | Not applicable |
| Clipboard history, with pinned entries kept | Not yet |
| Several cursors, and a rectangular selection | Partly |
| Bookmarks that persist, find their line again by its content, carry notes, and fill a panel | Partly |
| The bookmarked lines extracted or deleted, or all the others | Yes |
| Markers: patterns lit in six colours, and kept | Partly |
| Command palette | Yes |
| Quick Open (⇧⌘O) — open tabs, recent files and a workspace's files by fuzzy name | Not yet |
| Minimap — the whole document in a strip, with marks | Not yet |
| Split view | Yes |
| Two files side by side, changes taken across, case and spacing ignored, a report saved | Yes |
| Soft wrap, zoom, light and dark following the system | Yes |
| Atomic saves, and a crash-recovery journal | Yes |
| A session restored with each window's scroll position, bookmarks and markers | Partly |
| A crash at launch that repeats is broken the second time | Not yet |
| Outside changes: a clean file reloads itself, a changed one asks | Yes |
| Workspaces — named sets of files reopened in one step, exported as JSON | Partly |
| A Jobs panel for everything running in the background | Not yet |
| The last closed tab reopened (⇧⌘T), tabs moved between windows | Partly |
| Shortcuts rebound, update checks switched off, nothing sent anywhere | Yes |
| A manual with a screenshot of every feature, a shortcuts page, benchmarks published | Partly |
| Read-only when a licence lapses; three Macs a licence; by the month, the year or once | Not applicable |
| A warning when an edit holds characters the file's encoding cannot — Your edits contain characters that… | Yes |
| Use Selection for Find (⌘E) and Jump to Selection (⌘J) | Not yet |
| Lines sorted by their length | Not yet |
| Lines shuffled | Not yet |
| Narrow to Selection and Widen — only the selected lines shown, for now | Partly |
| Non-breaking spaces made plain | Partly |
| XML formatted | Not yet |
| Quit and Close All Windows, so they do not come back | Yes |
Questions
About this comparison
Is Intact CSV Editor a good alternative to Caxton?
For most people who work on a Mac, yes. It does 31 of the 75 features Caxton lists, 22 more in part, and 29 things we did not find in Caxton's documentation — SQL queries, Parquet files and column rules among them. Where Caxton is ahead is listed on this page too.
Does Intact CSV Editor have more features than Caxton?
Of the 57 features of Intact CSV Editor we looked for in Caxton's documentation, we found 28, some of them only in part; the other 29 we did not find. The other way round, Intact CSV Editor lacks 19 of the 75 features Caxton lists.
How was this comparison made?
We read the features page, the manual, the shortcut and menu references, benchmarks, changelog 1.0.0–1.7.2, the guides, pricing and privacy, and the menus of version 1.7.2 on 10 September 2026. Every feature Caxton lists was checked against Intact CSV Editor, and every one of Intact CSV Editor's was looked for in Caxton's pages. A dash means we found nothing like it there; Caxton may do more than it documents. If something has changed, write to info@marketvision.ch and we will correct it.
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