CodeBeautify Alternatives: 7 Secure Code Formatters After the 2025 Leak

The official Prettier playground lets you test Prettier's opinionated formatting in the browser. It supports JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, HTML, JSON, GraphQL, Markdown and YAML.

If you already use Prettier in your CI pipeline or editor, the playground is the obvious choice for quick formatting checks. It runs the actual Prettier library in the browser, so the output matches what you would get locally. The configuration panel exposes every option (print width, tab width, trailing commas, bracket spacing), which makes it handy for settling team debates about code style.

The downside is that Prettier is strictly a formatter. It will not validate your JSON, convert between formats or minify anything. If you need SQL, TOML or CSV formatting, you will have to look elsewhere.

JS Beautifier (beautifier.io) is the web interface for the popular js-beautify library used in many editors and build tools. It has been around for over a decade and remains the go-to tool for unminifying JavaScript. If you have ever needed to make sense of a webpack bundle or a minified library, this is what you reach for. It handles packed, obfuscated and minified code well, and it also formats HTML and CSS, though without the depth of dedicated tools.

The limitation is clear: three languages, formatting only. No validation, no conversion, no JSON-specific features. If CodeBeautify was your Swiss Army knife, JS Beautifier is more like a very good screwdriver.

Chrome and Firefox DevTools are the most private option on this list. Everything stays on your machine by definition. The Sources panel can pretty-print minified JavaScript and CSS with a single click, which covers the common "I need to read this minified code" case. The Network tab shows JSON responses as a tree you can expand and collapse.

DevTools is not really a formatter in the usual sense, though. You cannot paste arbitrary code to beautify it, you cannot choose indentation settings, and there is no conversion or validation. Think of it as a complement to a dedicated tool rather than a standalone CodeBeautify replacement.

JSON Editor Online is arguably the best dedicated JSON editor on the web. The two-pane layout, code on the left and tree on the right, makes deeply nested objects easy to understand. It also supports formatting, validation and JMESPath queries. The free version covers everyday formatting and validation, and it all runs locally.

Where it falls short as a CodeBeautify replacement is scope: it only handles JSON. If you used CodeBeautify for HTML, CSS or SQL formatting, you will need other tools. The paid tier adds cloud storage and collaboration, which means your data starts going to servers. Stick with the free version for anything sensitive.

CSS Portal is a collection of CSS-focused tools, worth bookmarking if you spend most of your day in stylesheets. The tools go beyond formatting: gradient generators, box-shadow builders, flexbox playgrounds and media query helpers all speed up prototyping.

As a CodeBeautify alternative, though, it has two real drawbacks. First, it processes code on the server, so your CSS is sent to their servers for formatting. Second, the scope is narrow. Need JSON, SQL, YAML or anything outside CSS? You are out of luck. The ad-heavy interface also makes long sessions tedious.

Dan's Tools is the closest in spirit to CodeBeautify, a grab-bag of developer utilities under one roof. You get JSON, XML, HTML and CSS formatters alongside Base64 encoders, URL decoders and hash generators. Decent breadth.

The problem is that most tools send your data to a server for processing. Individual tools are also fairly basic: no syntax highlighting, no configuration options, nothing you would call advanced. It works in a pinch, but if you are leaving CodeBeautify to keep your code off other people's servers, Dan's Tools does not solve that.