One of the six is ours. M3UPlaylist is the tool this site publishes, so read the entry for it knowing that. Nothing below is a hands-on lab test: every competitor detail comes from the vendor's own public pages, and where a vendor does not state something, the table says so instead of guessing.
How this comparison was built
Each vendor site was read in November 2026. The five criteria were chosen before looking at the results, and they favour one property above the others: whether the playlist is processed in your browser. That is a deliberate bias, because a playlist can contain access credentials in its URLs, and a tool that uploads the file has to be trusted with them.
Criteria, in the order they appear in the table:
- Price and account. What it costs, and whether using it requires registering.
- Where the file is processed. Client-side in the page, or on the vendor's server.
- Editing. Renaming and regrouping entries, and removing duplicates.
- Guide data. Whether EPG or XMLTV matching is offered.
- Output. What you get back: a downloaded file, a hosted playlist URL, or both.
The six tools
M3UPlaylist
Ours. A validator, a converter and an editor, each on its own page, all parsing the file in the browser. No account, no upload, no hosted playlist URL. The converter writes CSV or JSON, and reads JSON back into a clean M3U. It does not support EPG and it does not test whether stream addresses are alive.
M3UEdit
A single-page editor at m3uedit.com that describes itself as free, with no account required and all processing client-side. You load a file or paste a URL, select groups or individual channels, and export a cleaned playlist. It presents editing, generating and converting as one flow rather than separate tools. No EPG support is stated.
M3U Maker
The broadest product here. The editor imports from a file, a URL or Xtream credentials, filters and reorders channels, and publishes a unique playlist URL that stays synced with the source. A free tier exists, with a Pro plan at 2 euro a month at the time of checking. M3U Maker also publishes a set of free single-purpose tools, including a validator, a duplicate remover, a merger and a splitter, which run in the browser without an account.
m3ueditor
Aimed at people running a playlist as a small service. It imports M3U or Xtream, manages groups and EPG, provides a web player, and can publish protected M3U and XMLTV links for use in TV apps such as TiviMate. Registration is required, and paid features are available through a trial rather than a stated free tier. The site advertises an AI assistant for editing by description.
Dion
A free browser editor from the makers of a paid Apple-platform player. It edits channel names, groups and tvg-id values inline, validates entries, runs bulk find-and-replace with an optional regular expression, removes duplicates and exports a UTF-8 M3U8. It states that files are processed locally and keeps your edits in browser storage so a reload does not lose work.
Klipa
A browser editor with an emphasis on not damaging attributes. It preserves unknown attributes and the EXTVLCOPT and KODIPROP directives, supports undo, and exports M3U or copies it to the clipboard. Files and pasted text stay in the browser; a playlist loaded from a URL is fetched through Klipa's own proxy, which the site says is guarded against server-side request forgery and does not log the URL.
Side by side
| M3UPlaylist | M3UEdit | M3U Maker | m3ueditor | Dion | Klipa | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free | Free tier, Pro 2 EUR/month | Free trial, paid features | Free tool | Free tools |
| Account required | No | No | Yes, for hosting | Yes | No | No |
| File processed | In browser | In browser | In browser for file tools | Not stated | In browser | In browser; URL loads via proxy |
| Rename and regroup | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Duplicate removal | Yes | Yes | Yes, also a free standalone tool | Not stated | Yes | Yes, with preview |
| EPG support | No | No | EPG validator among free tools | Yes, plus XMLTV publishing | EPG matcher | EPG matcher |
| Hosts a playlist URL | No | No | Yes, with auto-refresh | Yes, protected links | No | No |
| Tests stream liveness | No | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
Sources: the vendors' own pages at m3uedit.com, m3umaker.com, m3ueditor.com, getdion.app and klipa.tv, all read in November 2026. "Not stated" means the vendor's public page does not claim the feature; it does not mean the feature is absent.
Playlist URLs and what they carry
An M3U URL is often not a public address. A provider-issued playlist commonly embeds a username, a password or a token in the query string, which is how the server knows who is asking. Anyone holding that URL can use it, and that is why the same address is sometimes called a credential rather than a link.
This changes the privacy question. A tool that processes the file locally never has the credential on its own infrastructure. A tool that fetches the URL for you does: it makes the request from its server or through its proxy, and the credential passes through it even if it is not stored. Klipa addresses this directly, saying its proxy is guarded against server-side request forgery and that it does not log the URL or its credentials. That is the kind of statement worth looking for, because silence is not reassurance.
Our own tools take a different route: you paste the file's contents or open the file itself, and we never make the request. If a playlist is behind a login, that means fetching it yourself first. It is less convenient, and it is the reason the tool has no server-side component to secure.
Adjacent tools that do test streams
None of the six editors above states that it checks whether the addresses in a playlist are alive. That is a different job, and two other browser tools do it, which is worth knowing before you assume a validator has covered it.
Free-Codecs M3U Checker uploads or accepts a pasted playlist, then tests each stream address and reports it as online, offline or timing out. It supports M3U, M3U8 and PLS, offers concurrency and timeout settings, and can export a playlist containing only the streams that responded. It notes honestly that RTMP, RTSP and MMS addresses cannot be checked from a web page and are flagged as unsupported protocols.
m3u8player.tools takes a different angle and analyses HLS manifests: it expands a master playlist into variants, reports resolution, declared bandwidth and codecs, then examines the media playlist for segment count, encryption, live versus video-on-demand status and dead segments. It uses a CORS proxy for segment checks, because cross-origin rules otherwise block them, and it is free without sign-up.
Both are liveness tools, not editors. Using one before editing is a sensible order: find out which entries are dead, then remove them in whichever editor fits.
What the table cannot tell you
Whether a large playlist stays usable. Several vendors mention size limits or large playlists, but the numbers are not comparable across pages, and a browser editor's real limit depends on the machine. If you routinely work with tens of thousands of entries, test with your own file before relying on any of these.
Whether the output is byte-identical. Every editor rewrites the file on export, and a rewrite can normalise whitespace, reorder attributes or drop a comment line. Klipa and Dion explicitly say they preserve attributes they do not edit; the others do not make that promise. If the playlist carries provider-specific directives, that promise is the one to check first.
Whether the privacy claim holds. "Client-side" is a claim about architecture, and it can be verified only by watching the network requests. A page that parses in the browser but fetches the playlist URL through its own server is doing something different from one that never sends the file anywhere.
Which one fits
- Inspect and clean a file once, without an account: any of M3UPlaylist, M3UEdit, Dion or Klipa. Ours is the only one of the four that also converts to CSV or JSON.
- Keep a playlist URL that updates itself for a TV app: M3U Maker or m3ueditor. Neither of the tools without accounts can do this, and that is a real difference rather than a missing feature.
- Attach EPG data: m3ueditor for a full guide workflow, Dion or Klipa for matching identifiers.
- Preserve provider directives exactly: Klipa, then Dion. Both state that untouched attributes survive the round trip.
- Work with no account and no stored copy: M3UPlaylist, M3UEdit or Dion, subject to the network-request caveat above.
Related comparisons
M3UPlaylist vs M3U Maker goes through the two products we can describe in most detail. Free alternatives to M3U Maker covers what to do if the paid tier is the sticking point, and M3UEdit vs m3ueditor separates two products whose names differ by two letters.
Sources
- m3uedit.com — free, no account, client-side claim, editing and conversion flow.
- m3umaker.com — plans, Pro pricing, hosted playlist URL, free tool set.
- m3ueditor.com — registration, EPG, web player, published playlist links.
- Dion M3U Playlist Editor — editing features, local processing, M3U8 export.
- Klipa M3U Playlist Editor — attribute preservation, proxy behaviour.
Prices and features were checked in November 2026 and will change. A vendor that adds or removes a feature makes this page wrong until it is updated, which is why the check date is stated at the top.