Sample JSON Lines files

Free JSON Lines test files from 5 KB to 1 GB. Pick a size and download, or type any size you need.

5 KB JSON Lines
27 lines
10 KB JSON Lines
55 lines
100 KB JSON Lines
548 lines
500 KB JSON Lines
2,720 lines
1 MB JSON Lines
5,427 lines
5 MB JSON Lines
Made on your device
10 MB JSON Lines
Made on your device
25 MB JSON Lines
Made on your device
50 MB JSON Lines
Made on your device · saved in pieces
100 MB JSON Lines
Made on your device · saved in pieces
500 MB JSON Lines
Made on your device · saved in pieces
1 GB JSON Lines
Made on your device · saved in pieces

Free for any use, including commercial. Made by this site, with no third-party content and no signup.

What is inside

One JSON object per line with 9 fields: id, name, email, role, department, city, started, salary, active
55 lines in the 10 KB file, 5,427 in the 1 MB file, 133,642 in the 25 MB file
Compact objects with no spaces, each line ending in a single LF
No outer array, no commas between lines, and no blank lines
UTF-8 names with accents, written as plain characters, not \u escapes
Each file stops at its last whole line, so most sizes are a little under the target

Try it with these tools

They run in your browser. The file you downloaded stays on your device.

About JSON Lines files

JSON Lines, also called JSONL or newline-delimited JSON, is a text file where every line is one complete JSON value, usually an object. There is no outer array and no comma between records: a line break ends each one.

Because each line stands alone, a program can read the file one line at a time without loading all of it. That is why JSONL is used for logs, data exports, database dumps and machine-learning training data, and why bulk APIs such as Elasticsearch and BigQuery accept it.

The usual mistake is treating a JSONL file as one JSON document. A normal JSON parser fails on line two, because two objects in a row are not valid JSON. Read it line by line, and make sure no record contains a raw line break.

Sources: JSON Lines format (jsonlines.org) · RFC 8259, JSON (IETF)

Questions

Why is the 1 MB JSONL file 999,957 bytes, not 1,000,000?

Adding padding would mean an extra line that is not a record, and many JSONL readers would choke on it. So each file stops at the last whole line that fits, which leaves it a few dozen bytes short.

Why does a JSON validator reject the whole file?

Because the file as a whole is not JSON. Each line is. Paste a single line into a JSON validator and it passes; use a JSONL viewer to check the full file.

Can I use these files to test a data pipeline at work?

Yes. The records are made up, the emails use example.com, and the files are public domain (CC0), so they are fine for commercial testing and demos.

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For developers: exact bytes and SHA-256

Sizes are decimal (1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes). The hosted files never change between builds, so these checksums stay valid.

File	Bytes	SHA-256
sample-5kb.jsonl	4,863 bytes	6e0fd3fcd4ac58adf3a1323d871fe430ef01eff59d6b17301ca4ac31ad0dbc02
sample-10kb.jsonl	9,888 bytes	a6cf5ee6bbd236575f14279b9f4fa61e5bd2774d437a0ff0b0f89dd54c976401
sample-100kb.jsonl	99,961 bytes	bd036346ffa77777469e78ccff4b14d369f078efee3f3664ecdd9c1139f95004
sample-500kb.jsonl	499,985 bytes	9b8d46d2997d656fe20be08dba6e6eb9eea26be647aefc07153fc77e74fb5a2c
sample-1mb.jsonl	999,957 bytes	c3a83d55050f7a75a0fca93aa632edf557980f6b188d2f7702b5c96f98aafda0