Compare two texts and see the differences

How to use it

1. Paste the old version in "Original text" and the new one in "New text".
2. Choose to compare by word (to see changes inside a sentence) or by line (for lists and texts where lines are the items).
3. Read the result: what was removed appears in red strikethrough, and what was added is underlined in green. The summary shows how many words were added and removed and the similarity percentage.
4. If you pasted the versions in the wrong order, use "Swap the texts".

How to read the result

• Red strikethrough: it is in the original text but not in the new one.
• Green underline: it is in the new text but was not in the original.
• No highlight: the same in both texts.
• The marks use strikethrough and underline in addition to color, so the difference can be read even without seeing colors.
• Similarity is the percentage of words that stayed the same. Two versions with few changes usually land above 90%.

When to use it

• Contracts, terms and regulations that were updated, when you want to know exactly what changed.
• Essays and articles reviewed by someone else without track changes turned on.
• Published text, to check that the site version matches the approved one.
• Task, guest or product lists in two different versions.
• Code or configuration snippets (by line), to find what was altered.

Word or line?

By word, the comparison shows small changes inside a sentence: a date that changed, a "not" that appeared. It is best for running text. By line, a change anywhere marks the whole line as removed and the new one as added. It is clearer for lists, tables and code, where each line is an item.

For very large, very different passages (for example, two texts of tens of thousands of words with nothing in common), comparing by word can be too heavy for the browser. In that case, compare by line or in parts.

Frequently asked questions

Does the comparison tell uppercase from lowercase?

Yes. "Home" and "home" show up as different. To ignore that, first convert both texts to lowercase with the uppercase and lowercase tool.

Do spaces and line breaks count as differences?

In the word comparison, yes: an extra space shows up as a change. To ignore those details, run both texts through the remove extra spaces tool first.

Are my texts sent to a server?

No. The comparison happens in your browser, so contracts and documents never leave your device.

Can I compare Word files or PDFs?

Not directly: the tool compares text. Copy the file’s content and paste it into the boxes.