Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your PCAP file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert PCAP to another file type
To convert PCAP capture files to another format, you need Wireshark or other Data software.
Convert a file to PCAP
To convert other file formats to the "Packet Capture Data" file type, you need software like Wireshark or a similar tool.
About PCAP files
The .PCAP (Packet Capture) file is a raw binary data container used to record intercepted network traffic. Network administrators and security analysts rely on these files to troubleshoot dropped packets, debug protocols, and investigate security breaches. The format is intrinsically linked to the libpcap API and is predominantly opened and analyzed using Wireshark or tcpdump. The primary disadvantage of the .PCAP format is its unindexed, binary structure. These files routinely exceed gigabytes in size, containing millions of individual packets. They are strictly proprietary in nature and completely unreadable in standard text editors, web browsers, or basic IT tools. To make the data useful for reporting or external scripting, users must convert the .PCAP data into structured text. The best conversion targets are CSV, JSON, or XML, which allow security engineers to parse specific packet fields (like IP addresses and ports) into databases. You can also export summaries to TXT. However, converting out of .PCAP means losing the raw binary structure, making it impossible to 'replay' the traffic back into a network interface. This file format is notoriously difficult to open or convert because standard converters cannot parse deeply nested, protocol-specific OSI layers. Usually, only the original packet dissection engine can properly read or export the data. Just drag and drop your file into convert.guru to identify the format, inspect the file, and show text or internal content. If our analysis detects a supported underlying or embedded format, viewing or conversion may still be possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your PCAP file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert PCAP file to TEXT, CSV, JSON, PDF, PCAPNG, TS, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI or CFG, you can use Wireshark or similar software from the "Network Traffic Analysis" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to PCAP, try Wireshark or another comparable tool in the "Network Traffic Analysis" category.
The PCAP Converter Story
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our PCAP converter.