Every CRM export, finance report, or survey dump eventually needs cleaning: duplicate rows, inconsistent date formats, mismatched name capitalization, malformed phone numbers. Two very different tools in our catalogue tackle that same problem from opposite ends — Clean My Sheet, a brand-new no-code browser tool, and OpenRefine, the long-established open-source standard for technical data cleaning. Clean My Sheet even lists OpenRefine as one of its own alternatives. Here's how they actually differ.
What Clean My Sheet is
Clean My Sheet is a new browser-based tool that processes CSV and Excel files entirely on your own device — in its Strict mode, your file is never uploaded anywhere. It follows a guided Scan → Review → Apply workflow: it scans your file, flags problems like duplicate rows, inconsistent dates, and malformed phone numbers (using fuzzy matching that surfaces near-duplicates for your review instead of silently deleting them), and lets you approve changes with full undo. Cleaning steps can be saved as a reusable "recipe" to replay on future files, and it ships presets tuned for CRM, finance, and survey data.
Pricing: Free tier gives unlimited preview with CSV export capped at 500 rows, no account required. A $9/month Pro tier promising uncapped exports was listed as "launching soon" at the time of writing and wasn't yet purchasable.
Forces: Genuinely private by default (100% client-side in Strict mode), a workflow built for people who aren't developers, and reusable recipes that save time on recurring cleanup jobs.
Limites: The free plan's 500-row export cap is a real wall for anyone cleaning a sizeable CRM export. It's a very new product — no long track record, no named company behind it beyond a Show HN launch — and it has none of OpenRefine's scripting or data-reconciliation power.
What OpenRefine is
OpenRefine (formerly Google Refine) is a free, open-source tool that's been the standard reference for technical data cleaning for well over a decade. It runs as a local web app on your own machine — your data never leaves your computer — and gives you faceted browsing, clustering algorithms to catch near-duplicate values, and GREL, its own expression language, for custom transformations. It can also reconcile your data against external databases like Wikidata to standardize and enrich entries.
Pricing: Completely free and open source.
Forces: Free with no row limits, extremely powerful once you know how to use it (clustering, scripting, external reconciliation), and battle-tested by data journalists, librarians, and analysts for years.
Limites: The interface is genuinely unfriendly to newcomers, and getting real value out of it requires learning GREL and its particular faceting/clustering workflow. There's no guided "here's what's wrong with your file" experience — you have to know what to look for.
Side by side
| Clean My Sheet | OpenRefine | |
|---|---|---|
| Interface | Guided, no-code, browser-based | Powerful but technical, steep learning curve |
| Processing | 100% client-side (Strict mode) | Local web app, data stays on your machine |
| Free tier limit | 500 rows per export | No row limit |
| Custom scripting | None — preset-driven | GREL expression language |
| Data reconciliation | Not offered | Yes (e.g. against Wikidata) |
| Price | Free / $9/mo Pro (launching soon) | Free |
Verdict
Pick Clean My Sheet if you're not a developer, you have a one-off messy export from a CRM, finance tool, or survey platform, and you want a guided experience that tells you what's wrong before you fix it — as long as your file fits inside the 500-row free cap or you're comfortable waiting for the paid tier to actually launch.
Pick OpenRefine if you regularly clean larger or more complex datasets, need to write custom transformation logic, or want to reconcile your data against external sources — and you're willing to spend time learning a tool that rewards technical users far more than casual ones.