YAML to JSON Converter Online — Free & Fast

YAML's rich type system — booleans, integers, floats, null, dates, and the infamous Norway problem — makes the conversion non-trivial. The OpenFormatter YAML to JSON converter resolves anchors and aliases, preserves numeric and boolean types correctly, strips comments (JSON has none), and runs entirely in your browser so manifests with secrets never leave your machine.

How to convert YAML to JSON online — 4 steps

1. Paste your YAML. Copy a Kubernetes manifest, OpenAPI spec, Helm values.yaml, Ansible variable file, or any .yaml source into the YAML Input panel above. Click Load Sample to try a Kubernetes Deployment.
2. Click Convert. The converter parses the YAML client-side, resolves anchors and aliases, and emits the equivalent JSON.
3. Verify types. Confirm booleans, numbers, and nested structures match the source. Quoted YAML scalars become JSON strings; unquoted numerics become JSON numbers.
4. Copy the JSON. Click Copy to grab the result for an API request body, a config consumer, a JSON-native datastore, or a JavaScript application.

Sample YAML and JSON output

Watch how the converter handles types, anchors, and nested structures:

# k8s deployment
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: web
  labels:
    tier: frontend
spec:
  replicas: 3
  enabled: true
  version: "1.25"
  ports:
    - 80
    - 443

{
  "apiVersion": "apps/v1",
  "kind": "Deployment",
  "metadata": {
    "name": "web",
    "labels": { "tier": "frontend" }
  },
  "spec": {
    "replicas": 3,
    "enabled": true,
    "version": "1.25",
    "ports": [80, 443]
  }
}

Notice that replicas: 3 stays a number, enabled: true stays a boolean, but version: "1.25" is preserved as a string because of the quotes — a critical detail when JSON consumers expect a semver string, not a float.

Common use cases

• check_circleSubmitting Kubernetes manifests directly to the API server, which accepts JSON natively
• check_circleConverting OpenAPI / Swagger specs from YAML to JSON for tooling that requires JSON
• check_circleFeeding Helm chart values.yaml into a JSON-only pipeline or admission controller
• check_circleTranslating Ansible variable files for integration tests written in JavaScript or Go
• check_circleStoring YAML config in Firestore, DynamoDB, or another JSON-native document store
• check_circleBridging YAML-based infrastructure-as-code into JSON-only API clients
• check_circleEmbedding YAML samples into JSON test fixtures and snapshots
• check_circleConverting GitHub Actions workflows to JSON for analysis or migration tooling

YAML 1.1 vs 1.2 — why types matter

The biggest source of bugs converting YAML to JSON is the difference between YAML 1.1 and 1.2 boolean handling. YAML 1.1 (still used by PyYAML default, older Ansible, and many k8s tools) treats yes, no, on, off, y, and n as booleans — which is why the country code NO for Norway becomes false in JSON. YAML 1.2 (used by go-yaml v3 and modern parsers) only treats true and false as booleans. When in doubt, quote the value: country: "NO" always becomes "country": "NO". The same applies to leading-zero integers (012 is octal in YAML 1.1) and Sexagesimal numbers (3:25 was a number in YAML 1.1, now a string).