Sample CSV Files — Download Test Data (10 to 100,000 Rows, BOM, Quoted)
Comma-Separated Values · .csv · MIME type text/csv
Download a sample CSV file sized for your test — 10 rows for a quick check, 100,000 rows (about 10 MB) for performance — plus the variants that break importers in production: a UTF-8 BOM file as Excel writes it, a file with no header row, a fully quoted file whose fields contain commas, quotes and line breaks, and a semicolon-delimited European file with decimal commas.
Every file shares the same ten columns (order_id, date, customer, region, product, category, quantity, unit_price, total, status) and the same fictional dataset as our JSON, XML, SQL and Excel samples, so you can import one and reconcile against another.
Download sample CSV files
| File | Details | Size | Download |
|---|---|---|---|
sample-data-10-rows.csv | 10 rows | 1 KB | |
sample-data-100-rows-no-header.csv | 100 rows | 10 KB | |
sample-data-100-rows.csv | 100 rows | 10 KB | |
sample-data-100-rows-semicolon.csv | 100 rows | 10 KB | |
sample-data-100-rows-utf8-bom.csv | 100 rows | 10 KB | |
sample-data-100-rows-quoted.csv | 100 rows | 17 KB | |
sample-data-1000-rows.csv | 1,000 rows | 100 KB | |
sample-data-10000-rows.csv | 10,000 rows | 1.0 MB | |
sample-data-100000-rows.csv | 100,000 rows | 10 MB |
Need one of every data format? Download the data sample pack (202 KB, one small file of every data format (17 files)).
Use these files from the command line or CI
Every URL is stable and CORS-open. Pin the SHA-256 in your test and you will know the moment a fixture changes.
# Download one file curl -O https://pnb-website-bucket.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/samples/data/csv/sample-data-10-rows.csv # Verify it (SHA-256 is listed for every file above) shasum -a 256 sample-data-10-rows.csv # Machine-readable index of every sample file curl https://pnb-website-bucket.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/samples/index.json | jq '.files[] | select(.format=="csv")'
CSV format at a glance
| Full name | Comma-Separated Values |
|---|---|
| Extensions | .csv |
| MIME type | text/csv |
| Standard | RFC 4180 (informal) |
| Encoding | UTF-8 (one variant with BOM) |
| Delimiters | Comma; semicolon variant; TSV available separately |
| Line endings | CRLF (as RFC 4180 specifies) |
| Columns | 10 (11 in the quoted variant, which adds notes) |
What people test with sample CSV files
- Import wizards and column-mapping UIs
- Streaming parsers on the 100,000-row file
- BOM handling (the first header becomes '\ufefforder_id' in naive parsers)
- Quoted fields with embedded newlines — the classic split-on-newline bug
- Locale handling: semicolons and decimal commas
Frequently asked questions
Why does my import show a strange character before the first column name?
That is the UTF-8 byte-order mark (EF BB BF) that Excel and some Windows tools write at the start of a file. Our utf8-bom sample reproduces it. Parsers should strip it; many do not, and the first column header silently becomes unusable.
How do I open a large CSV that Excel can't handle?
Excel stops at 1,048,576 rows and slows down long before that. Our 100,000-row file opens in Excel but is better handled with a database (SQLite, DuckDB), a scripting language (pandas, csv module) or a dedicated viewer. Our SQLite sample contains the same data already loaded.
Are these CSV files safe to download?
Yes. Every file is generated by our own open script from scratch — nothing is scraped or user-uploaded — and contains no scripts, macros or executables. The SHA-256 of each file is published on this page so you can verify what you received.
Can I use the sample CSV files commercially?
Yes. They are free for any purpose, including commercial products, test suites, demos and redistribution, with no attribution required. There is nothing to license and no one to ask.
Can I hotlink these files or use them in CI?
Yes. Every link is a stable direct URL over HTTPS with Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * and long cache headers, so curl, wget, fetch() and test runners can pull them directly. A JSON index of every file is linked from each page (see the command-line section).
Related sample files
Testing a file pipeline? We build them.
Uploads, conversions, previews, document processing and media workflows are the kind of production systems Pine & Birch designs and runs for clients — which is why we needed these files in the first place.
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