--- title: OpenRefine Reviews meta_title: 'OpenRefine Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 12 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how OpenRefine works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.6 review_count: 12 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-06-04' parent_category: name: IT Infrastructure url: https://www.g2.com/categories/it-infrastructure --- # OpenRefine Reviews **Vendor:** OpenRefine **Category:** [Data Quality Tools](https://www.g2.com/categories/data-quality) **Average Rating:** 4.6/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 12 ## About OpenRefine OpenRefine is a tool for working with messy data: cleaning it, transforming it and extending it with web services and external data. ## OpenRefine Reviews ### 1. The best data cleaner yet! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jenny T. | Onboarding Implementation Specialist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2022 **What do you like best about OpenRefine?** I like how seamless it is to use the tool! Every time I think it is perfect I have found that my data is improved. I use this tool both personally and professionally and I have found that it makes my work so much easier. **What do you dislike about OpenRefine?** At this current time I like all aspects of the tool. I have been using for quite some time for both professional and personal use and each time the experience continues to get better. **What problems is OpenRefine solving and how is that benefiting you?** In past roles it took me so long to take the data I was receiving and transform and process it into other applications. OpenRefine has made it so much simpler to do this and at a fraction of that time. ### 2. OpenRefine **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Joseph H. | Unemployed, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 09, 2021 **What do you like best about OpenRefine?** OpenRefine makes it quick and easy to import a very large dataset and then clean that data so it is ready for import into a different software for data analysis. **What do you dislike about OpenRefine?** OpenRefine may take some time to learn and become a comfortable user of. It is not quite as simple as doing it in Excel, but once you learn it is definitely a faster way to clean data. **Recommendations to others considering OpenRefine:** I would certainly recommend OpenRefine to anyone who would like to clean a very large data set, without having to do any of it manually. OpenRefine will not only help you make the changes you want quickly and efficiently, but it will also help you identify outliers and errors in your data set that you would never spot by just glancing at the data. **What problems is OpenRefine solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am saving time in my data cleaning, but doing very large changes to large datasets in a matter of seconds with just a few clicks. The software also suggests changes to be made by recognising data points that are likely to be outliers or mistakes. ### 3. Quickest way to clean data **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vinu Prasad B. | Data Scientist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 22, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenRefine?** The button UI to do complex cleaning tasks. Most of the things/tasks that takes a lot of time and code to complete can be done in a few seconds using Openrefine. This makes it one of the easiest and user-friendly application. **What do you dislike about OpenRefine?** Maybe the theme of the tool can be changed and made more user-friendly. Most of the things/tasks that takes a lot of time and code to complete can be done in a few seconds using Openrefine. This makes it one of the easiest and user-friendly application. **Recommendations to others considering OpenRefine:** Explore it for yourself and realize it is a really good product. **What problems is OpenRefine solving and how is that benefiting you?** I usually use it for Data processing and cleaning purposes. It is so quick and easy to use the platform. Most of the things/tasks that takes a lot of time and code to complete can be done in a few seconds using Openrefine. This makes it one of the easiest and user-friendly application. ### 4. Easy to use and versatile **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 22, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenRefine?** I like that it is easy to pick up and learn and intuitive to use **What do you dislike about OpenRefine?** The interface is a little outdated in my opinion but it doesn’t affect the usage **Recommendations to others considering OpenRefine:** There are lots of tools online for tutorials on how to use OpenRefine which also helps learning to use the tool. **What problems is OpenRefine solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used it for data cleaning and it’s fast and requires minimum installation and small learning curve ### 5. Awesome Utility Tool for Data Wrangling **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dami A. | Senior Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about OpenRefine?** The interface is simple to quickly understand and it is easy to go back of edits without having to make mistakes. The most favorable thing about OpenRefine is that it is open source and is 100% free to use. The software requires that you download some files before it can be run. The ability to view the data similar to a spreadsheet like performing tasks is a positive. **What do you dislike about OpenRefine?** Some of GREL coding language is not consistent with popular languages as the newer versions keep on getting released. For example, using an nested IF/OR statement does not work without putting it in a specific unconventional well. Also, it would be better if a JSON file can be exported directly instead of having to copy the JSON code generated by OpenRefine into a JSON file I create outside of OpenRefine. **Recommendations to others considering OpenRefine:** When releasing newer versions, please make sure that previous GREL commands can still work. It would be great if OpenRefine can be accessed as a package through Python or at least integrated with Python someday. Being able to call the OpenRefine library through Python will prevent the need to download it and having to run an application in the background. **What problems is OpenRefine solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used OpenRefine to wrangle my data by finding matching cells within a column that might be formatted with different capitalization. I have also used it to perform filtering on empty rows, split columns, and run GREL to bin rows. ### 6. Easy to use **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anup A. | Research Assistant, Higher Education, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2019 **What do you like best about OpenRefine?** The best feature that I like about openrefine is it is easy to import the files and edit them, such as editing y cells or by clustering. And it can import/export into different formats of files. **What do you dislike about OpenRefine?** I had a really hard time building my own code into the different column sections. **Recommendations to others considering OpenRefine:** I think it needs to be more graphical. I am fine it with being plain and simple but most people prefer different themes. **What problems is OpenRefine solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data cleaning and converting the files into different versions. ### 7. OpenRefine For Cleaning Data **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Srijith S. | Data Scientist, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 30, 2019 **What do you like best about OpenRefine?** The simple UI interface that allows you to look directly at the columns you are working on and changing these values with immediate response **What do you dislike about OpenRefine?** Some jargon is used inside the application. If there was a brief description of some ideas of these jargon, it might be more intuitive **What problems is OpenRefine solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a Data Analyst, I work with dirty data, by using OpenRefine I can clean this very easily and at the same time find formal ways to clean similar data using the json recipe. ### 8. Great tool for data understanding but doesn't scale **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shadi K. | Job Facilitator, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 26, 2019 **What do you like best about OpenRefine?** Easy to use. Easy to filter values and create visualizations. Easy to do bi-variate analysis of variables. **What do you dislike about OpenRefine?** Does not scale to analyze large data sets. Basically it is limited to the amount of RAM you have on you computer since it runs locally and not on the cloud. **Recommendations to others considering OpenRefine:** It's very good if you are dealing with a small data set but not so much when the data is larger than 100MB. **What problems is OpenRefine solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data understanding: Getting the central tendencies and spread of the variables along with detecting outliers and missing values. Data cleaning: Simple data cleaning operations like binning. ### 9. Superb open-source data preparation and cleaning tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Management Consulting | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 28, 2019 **What do you like best about OpenRefine?** OpenRefine runs in the browser, supports a wide variety of data formats and is loaded with features to make data cleaning, preparation and structuring a breeze. I especially like the built-in algorithms to identify duplicates of data. In general, OpenRefine saves a lot of time by not having to write custom code to clean and structure data. **What do you dislike about OpenRefine?** The interface could use an update to look a bit more modern, but works very well nonetheless. **Recommendations to others considering OpenRefine:** Make good use of the data deduplication algorithms, they're very helpful. **What problems is OpenRefine solving and how is that benefiting you?** Significantly reduce the time needed for data preparation and cleaning. Saves writing custom code. ### 10. Data Wrangling Open Source Software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dami A. | Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 27, 2019 **What do you like best about OpenRefine?** The idea that this software is open source is the most attractive portion of the application. Being able to keep track of each change performed and also revert back to them in OpenRefine is also a huge plus. A JSON file can also be exported with all the changes made for proper documentation and allows re-creating the data wrangling steps. **What do you dislike about OpenRefine?** Since the application is open source, it requires storing secondary files in the folder structure where the main application is saved to work correctly. The syntax for the General Refine Expression Language (GREL) seems a bit different compared to other languages out there such as Python and usually takes some time to get used to. Navigating through the application could be confusing at first but it takes some time to get used to and clearly understand where each button is located and what they do. **Recommendations to others considering OpenRefine:** My recommendation to others considering OpenRefine is to learn the syntax for General Refine Expression Language (GREL). This will come in very handy in performing more complex manipulations to your data table. **What problems is OpenRefine solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used OpenRefine on different projects with the most recent being data wrangling and cleaning up a data table with baseball information. OpenRefine is able to recognize patterns and data types in the each feature easily making it very useful to easily modify the data table. ### 11. I got red of most of the small mistakes in the data **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sam N. | Researcher, Food & Beverages, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2019 **What do you like best about OpenRefine?** I use OpenRefine mainly to check tons of data before sending it to the users, and this data might include small and uncaught errors like the weird characters or the extra punctuation or the extra space in the beginning of the cells which might led to show the same info in 2 different ways, and for this OpenRefine is serving me in the best way for that. **What do you dislike about OpenRefine?** some times you have to do the same step several times for multiple columns in Excel for Example, when I use it to check the data from Excel data I have several columns to check and I have to go to each column and do the facet steps, it would be much easier if there are a multiple selection which allow the user to do the same process across several selections. **What problems is OpenRefine solving and how is that benefiting you?** checking and correcting big data files ### 12. Often use of OpenRefine - Great product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 21, 2018 **What do you like best about OpenRefine?** How easy it makes to clean up metadata without getting too confusing. **What do you dislike about OpenRefine?** It tends to freeze quite often. However, it does save the project you are working. **Recommendations to others considering OpenRefine:** If you are often in need of cleaning up metadata or other forms of data, this is an easy to use software that helps clean data quickly. **What problems is OpenRefine solving and how is that benefiting you?** Cleaning up metadata quickly and easily. ## OpenRefine Discussions - [How do you cluster in OpenRefine?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-do-you-cluster-in-openrefine) - [What language is OpenRefine?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-language-is-openrefine) - [Is OpenRefine secure?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-openrefine-secure) - [What is OpenRefine good for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-openrefine-good-for) - [View OpenRefine pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/openrefine/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-25+16%3A34%3A25+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=3ef12615-55e1-42c4-a8b0-5249ab467081&secure%5Btoken%5D=c3a3f76b6e84142fa786dca8c3ce28093585cf8cc3003a3afde416b2fbfce302&format=llm_user) ## OpenRefine Features **Functionality** - Identification - Correction - Normalization - Preventative Cleaning - Data Matching **Management** - Reporting - Automation - Quality Audits - Dashboard - Governance **Generative AI** - AI Text Generation - AI Text Summarization ## Top OpenRefine Alternatives - [Alteryx Designer Cloud](https://www.g2.com/products/alteryx-alteryx-designer-cloud/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (151 reviews) - [Planhat](https://www.g2.com/products/planhat/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (920 reviews) - [Demandbase One](https://www.g2.com/products/demandbase-one/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (1,942 reviews)