# OpenRefine/OpenRefine

OpenRefine is a free, open source power tool for working with messy data and improving it

Repository: https://github.com/OpenRefine/OpenRefine
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/openrefine
Homepage: https://openrefine.org/
Language: Java
License: BSD-3-Clause
License Family: permissive
Topics: datacleansing, data-analysis, java, opendata, wikidata, journalism, data-science, datajournalism, datacleaning, datamining, reconciliation, data-wrangling
Last push: 2026-08-21T18:54:03+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 90/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:39:23.370411+00:00)
- activity 98, release rhythm 73, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5071, "days_push": 12, "days_rel": 182, "gap_med": 21.5, "n_releases_24m": 11}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 11954, forks 2161 (observed 2026-08-28T04:10:50.554285+00:00)

## What it is
OpenRefine is a free, open-source desktop application (running a local web server accessed via browser) for cleaning, transforming, and enriching messy datasets. It offers faceted browsing, clustering to fix inconsistencies, reconciliation against external databases like Wikidata, and full undo/redo of operation histories.

## Use cases
- clean up messy csv or spreadsheet data
- deduplicate and merge similar values in a dataset
- reconcile entity names against wikidata
- explore large datasets with facets and filters
- convert data from one format to another
- bulk upload cleaned data to wikidata
- augment a dataset with data from web services

## When to choose
- you need to interactively explore and clean tabular data without writing code
- you want to match your records against external authorities like Wikidata or library subject headings
- you care about privacy and want data cleaning done locally, not in the cloud
- you need reproducible, replayable cleaning histories with undo/redo

## When to avoid
- you need fully automated, scheduled ETL pipelines - OpenRefine is interactive by design
- you want to clean data on a headless server without a browser interface
- your data does not fit a tabular/row-based model
- you need a lightweight command-line-only tool

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: stable
- function: data-science, etl, search-engine, gui, self-hosted
- domain: data-science, developer-tools
- platform: cross-platform, jvm, browser
- tags: data-cleaning, data-wrangling, reconciliation, wikidata, faceted-browsing, grel, data-journalism, linked-open-data, clustering, record-linkage, data-engineering, openrefine, web-server, desktop

## Member repositories
- OpenRefine/OpenRefine (main) score 90

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:50.554285+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:15:02.934614+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/OpenRefine/OpenRefine (fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:50.554285+00:00, sha ce9933910f34)
  - homepage: https://openrefine.org/ (fetched 2026-08-29T08:12:59.924422+00:00, sha 65931ae1e440)
  - site_page: https://openrefine.org/docs (fetched 2026-08-29T08:12:59.926964+00:00, sha 6829dcfd2e8d)
  - site_page: https://openrefine.org/docs/manual/facets (fetched 2026-08-29T08:12:59.928664+00:00, sha 1011f66a8f18)
  - site_page: https://openrefine.org/docs/manual/cellediting (fetched 2026-08-29T08:12:59.931406+00:00, sha d9d5d7f67a92)
  - site_page: https://openrefine.org/docs/manual/reconciling (fetched 2026-08-29T08:12:59.933708+00:00, sha a0a70c009e49)
  - site_page: https://openrefine.org/docs/manual/running (fetched 2026-08-29T08:12:59.936185+00:00, sha 016a55b6491c)
  - site_page: https://openrefine.org/docs/manual/wikibase/overview (fetched 2026-08-29T08:12:59.938852+00:00, sha 10f1353971f2)
  - site_page: https://openrefine.org/docs/technical-reference/development-roadmap (fetched 2026-08-29T08:12:59.941248+00:00, sha f4e3efc5695f)
  - site_page: https://openrefine.org/docs/technical-reference/contributing (fetched 2026-08-29T08:12:59.942833+00:00, sha f5f65d511614)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.