Google Sheets
Almost 10× the cell limit
Google Sheets supports up to 10 million cells, including CSV imports. The largest file we tested contained 99.9 million.
Built for CSV files spreadsheets cannot hold
CSVUtility is a Mac editor for datasets that outgrow a worksheet. In our 1 GB test it opened 12.49 million rows and 99.9 million cells in 2.03 seconds, and searched every cell in 0.39 seconds.
Headline statistics
99.9 million cells
Opened, searched, filtered, checked, sorted, and exported in our 1 GB test.
2.03 seconds
To get a 1 GB CSV ready to scroll the first time.
0.39 seconds
To search all 99.9 million cells for a missing value.
35× faster
Opening the same unchanged file again.
Go beyond spreadsheet limits
CSVUtility works with the complete CSV rather than forcing it into a conventional spreadsheet-sized grid.
Excel worksheet
11.9× the row limit
Excel worksheets support 1,048,576 rows. CSVUtility indexed, searched, filtered, sorted, checked, and exported 12.49 million rows in the 1 GB file.
Limits are based on published Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel specifications accessed August 2026. The Excel comparison refers to worksheet rows, not Power Query or the Data Model.
Fast across the complete workflow
Opening a large CSV is only the beginning. CSVUtility is built to keep search, diagnostics, sorting, filtering, and saving practical at multi-million-row scale.
| Operation on the 1 GB file | Median time |
|---|---|
| First open | 2.03 seconds |
| Open again, file unchanged | 0.058 seconds |
| Search 99.9 million cells | 0.39 seconds |
| Check 12.49 million rows | 1.21 seconds |
| Sort by two columns | 7.60 seconds |
| Filter with two conditions | 14.58 seconds |
| Save a full 1 GB export | 50.81 seconds |
The same work at 100 MB, 500 MB, and 1 GB
Median of three release-mode runs. Times are wall-clock seconds.
| Dataset | 100 MB | 500 MB | 1 GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rows | 1.22 million | 6.10 million | 12.49 million |
| Cells | 9.75 million | 48.77 million | 99.88 million |
| First open | 0.18s | 0.91s | 2.03s |
| Open again, unchanged | 0.006s | 0.029s | 0.058s |
| Full no-match search | 0.054s | 0.202s | 0.394s |
| Check for broken rows | 0.115s | 0.627s | 1.206s |
| Sort by two columns | 0.419s | 2.731s | 7.604s |
| Filter with two conditions | 1.302s | 6.680s | 14.583s |
| Complete UTF-8 export | 5.027s | 24.539s | 50.811s |
What 1 GB works out to
253.6M
cells searched per second
10.3M
rows checked per second
1.64M
rows sorted per second
856k
rows filtered per second
20.2 MB
exported per second
35×
faster repeat indexing
Large-file performance by design
CSVUtility does not load every cell into memory. It works with the file on disk and reads values when they are needed.
A
Reads the file from disk as you scroll
B
A small pointer per row instead of a live cell for every value
C
Draws only the cells on screen
D
Uses more than one CPU core for search and filter
E
Move and delete columns without rewriting the whole file first
F
Exports large files without loading them all into memory
G
Unchanged files open faster the second time
H
Long jobs run in the background so you can keep scrolling
How we tested
These numbers are from CSVUtility 1.4.1, build 9, on a 14-inch MacBook Pro with an Apple M1 Pro (8 CPU cores) and 16 GB of memory, running macOS 26.5.2. We used the same release you can download. Files were UTF-8 CSVs with eight columns, at 100 MB, 500 MB, and 1 GB. Each operation ran three times; we report the middle result. The Mac had already read the file from disk once.
Search looked for a value that was not in the file, so the whole file was scanned. The filter used two conditions. Sorting used a number column and a text column. Export rewrote the whole 1 GB file as UTF-8.
Actual performance will vary with hardware, storage speed, column count, quoting, field length, encoding, active edits, and other running applications.
Related reading: open a large CSV on Mac, why Excel struggles with large CSVs, and the full feature list.
Common questions
How large was the 1 GB CSVUtility test file?
The 1 GB UTF-8 file had eight columns, 12.49 million rows, and 99.88 million cells. CSVUtility 1.4.1 opened it in 2.03 seconds (middle of three runs) on a 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro and 16 GB of memory.
Is CSVUtility more capable than Excel or Google Sheets overall?
No, and we do not claim that. Excel and Sheets include workbooks, charts, and data models that CSVUtility does not target. The tested file was almost 10 times Google Sheets 10 million cell limit, and 11.9 times Excel worksheet rows. That Excel comparison is the worksheet grid, not Power Query or the Data Model.
Will my Mac match these benchmark times?
Times will vary with hardware, storage speed, column count, quoting, field length, encoding, unsaved edits, and other apps. The published numbers used a warm filesystem cache and three median trials on the machine listed in the methodology.
Your CSV is large. Your editor should not feel slow.
Open, inspect, clean, filter, sort, and export multi-million-row CSV files on a Mac.
Download for MacOS