Compare two texts

Paste the original and the changed version and get a colour-coded view of what was added, removed and changed, by line or word by word.

  • Free
  • No sign-up
  • Runs in your browser
compare-text

100% private — both texts are compared in your browser and never sent to any server.

Next step

Keep going with your result in another tool. Nothing is uploaded.

How it works

Paste both versions

The original on the left and the changed text on the right.

Choose how to compare

By lines with changed words highlighted, or word by word.

Read the differences

Green is added, red is removed. Copy the result as text if you need it.

What changed between these two versions?

Anyone who works with text ends up with two versions of it: an edited contract and the original, the draft that came back from a reviewer, two answers to the same question, a configuration file before and after a change or a translation and its update. Reading both side by side to spot the differences is slow, and the eye misses a changed word in a paragraph that looks the same. This tool finds every difference for you and colour-codes it.

Two ways to compare

  • By lines is the classic diff view. Lines that only exist in the original are marked in red with a minus sign, lines that only exist in the changed text are marked in green with a plus sign, and unchanged lines are shown in between. When a line was edited rather than replaced, the words that changed inside it are highlighted too, so you see at a glance that only one word was altered.
  • By words shows the changed text as one running paragraph, with deleted words in red and added words in green. It is the better view for prose, where the line breaks matter little and a small edit would otherwise flag a whole paragraph.

Ignore what does not matter

Two options make the comparison more useful. Ignoring capital letters treats Hello and hello as the same word. Ignoring differences in spaces treats one space, two spaces and a tab as equivalent, and ignores spaces at the beginning and end of lines, which is the usual noise when text comes from different programs. For long texts, choose to show only the differences with two lines of context, and the unchanged stretches collapse into a single line saying how many lines were left out.

The numbers

Above the comparison you see how many lines or words were added, removed and left unchanged, and a similarity percentage. It is a useful way to check whether two documents are close variants or different texts altogether. If the texts are identical under the current options, the tool says so.

What it does not do

The comparison is textual: it does not understand meaning, so a sentence rephrased with the same idea is shown as removed and added. It compares plain text only, not the formatting of a Word or PDF file; copy the text out first. Very long texts with a huge number of differences may be too much for a comparison in the browser, and the tool will ask you to compare smaller parts.

Frequently asked questions

How do I compare two texts and see the differences?
Paste the original in the left box and the changed version in the right one. The differences appear below in colour: green for added, red for removed.
What is the difference between comparing by lines and by words?
By lines shows each line as added, removed or unchanged, and highlights the changed words inside edited lines. By words shows one running text with the changed words marked.
Can I ignore capital letters or extra spaces?
Yes. Tick "Ignore upper/lower case" or "Ignore differences in spaces" to hide that kind of change.
Can I compare two Word or PDF files?
Not directly. Copy the text from each document and paste it here. Only the text is compared, not the formatting.
How do I copy the differences?
Use "Copy the differences as text". Lines are prefixed with + and -, which is the usual way to show a diff in plain text.
Are my texts uploaded anywhere?
No. Both texts are compared in your browser and never leave your device.

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