Is my JSON uploaded to a server?

No. The jq engine runs locally in your browser as WebAssembly. Your JSON and your filters are processed on your device and are never sent over the network — safe to use with production or sensitive data.

Is this the real jq, or a reimplementation?

It is the genuine jq program (jq 1.8.2) compiled from C to WebAssembly. Filters behave exactly as they do on the command line, including functions, pipes, reduce, paths and modules built into jq.

Which jq command-line options are supported?

You can toggle raw output (-r), compact output (-c), slurp (-s), null input (-n) and sort keys (-S). The filter box accepts any valid jq program, so pipes, functions and multi-line filters all work.

jq Playground — Run jq Filters in Your Browser, Free & Private

Run real jq filters over JSON — the genuine jq engine, live, all in your browser.

How to use the jq playground (free)

Paste your JSON into the JSON input box.
Type a jq filter — start with . for the whole document, or something like .items | map(.name).
Read the result on the right. It updates live as you type. Toggle raw, compact, slurp, null input or sort keys as needed, then copy the output.

What is jq?

jq is a small, powerful command-line program for slicing, filtering, mapping and transforming JSON. A jq filter takes JSON in and produces JSON out — you compose filters with the pipe |, just like a Unix shell. It is the standard tool for wrangling API responses, config files and logs. This playground runs the real jq engine (jq 1.8.2), compiled from C to WebAssembly, so every filter behaves exactly as it does on the command line.

Example filters

.	Pretty-print the whole document.
.user.name	Get a nested field.
.items[]	Iterate over an array, one result per element.
.items \| map(.name)	Collect one field from every element into an array.
.items \| length	Count elements.
[.items[] \| select(.price > 10)]	Filter elements by a condition.
.items \| group_by(.tag)	Group elements by a field.
[.items[].price] \| add	Sum a field across elements.
to_entries \| map(.key)	List the keys of an object.

The command-line options

The toggles map to jq's real flags. raw output (-r) prints strings without quotes — handy for shell-style output. compact (-c) puts each result on one line instead of pretty-printing. slurp (-s) reads the entire input into a single array first, so you can process a stream of JSON values at once. null input (-n) runs the filter with null as input, useful for generating JSON from scratch. sort keys (-S) emits object keys in sorted order.

Is my JSON private?

Yes. The jq engine is self-hosted here and runs entirely inside your browser tab as WebAssembly. Your JSON and your filters are never uploaded — there is no server round-trip and no account. Open your browser's network tab and watch: no request carries your data. That makes this safe for production payloads, tokens and other sensitive JSON, and it keeps working offline once the page has loaded.

Why not just use an online jq that runs on a server?

Most web-based jq tools send your JSON to a backend to evaluate the filter. For anything sensitive that is a leak waiting to happen. Running the actual jq binary in your browser gives you identical behaviour with none of the exposure.

jq · Playground