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Find what changed between two versions
Text Compare
LivePaste two versions of the same text and see exactly what was added and what was removed. Compare line by line for code, config and lists, or word by word for prose, where a single edited word should not report the whole paragraph as rewritten. Both texts stay in your browser.
Compare by
Paste text into both boxes. The comparison runs as you type, inside this page.
Compared inside your browser. Neither text is uploaded.
What it does
- Two modes: line by line, or word by word for ordinary writing
- Optionally ignore capitals, or the spacing and indentation
- Says plainly when a stretch was too large to compare exactly
Your files
It never leaves your device.
This one runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type or drop here is sent to us, so there is nothing on our server to keep, and nothing to delete. It works offline once the page has loaded.
How to compare two texts
Paste both versions
The box on the left is labelled Original, the one on the right Changed. Which way round they go decides how the result reads: what is only on the left counts as removed, what is only on the right as added. Swap sides switches them.
Choose Line or Word
Compare by Line treats each line as one unit, which is what you want for code, CSV rows, config files and lists. Compare by Word splits on spaces instead, which is what you want for prose: editing one word in a paragraph then marks that word rather than the whole line. There is no character-by-character mode.
Turn off the differences you do not care about
Ignore case matches Hello with hello. Ignore whitespace trims each line and collapses runs of spaces and tabs inside it, so a re-indented file stops reading as entirely rewritten. Ignore whitespace is greyed out in Word mode, because a word token has no whitespace in it for the option to ignore.
Read the result
The comparison updates as you type, with a count of what was added, removed and left alone. Added text sits on a green tint, removed on a red one, and unchanged text is dimmed so changes stand out. Copy puts the whole comparison on your clipboard with a plus or minus in front of each changed line.
Frequently asked questions
How do I compare two blocks of text for differences?
Paste the first version into the Original box and the second into the Changed box. The comparison runs as you type, so there is no button to press: you get a count of how many lines were added and removed, and the text marked up underneath. Nothing is uploaded and there is no signup.
What is the difference between comparing by line and by word?
It is the unit being matched. In Line mode, changing one word marks the whole line as removed and its replacement as added, which is what you want for code or a config file, where the line is the meaningful unit. Word mode splits on spaces instead, so editing one word marks that word alone, and it ignores how the text was wrapped: the same sentence broken across lines differently in the two boxes still matches.
Can it show me which words changed inside a line?
Use Word mode, which is as close as this gets. There is no character-level mode, so it will not highlight the two letters that changed inside a word: it reports the whole word as removed and the corrected one as added. That is deliberate, because a character diff of ordinary prose is harder to read than the text it describes.
Does it notice when I move a paragraph rather than rewrite it?
No. Moved text is reported as removed from where it was and added where it now is, because the tool has no concept of a move and inventing one would mean claiming something it cannot check. It does avoid the opposite mistake: it anchors on lines that appear exactly once in each text, so moving one paragraph does not make everything after it read as changed.
How much text can it handle?
Ordinary documents are fine, including large ones: two four-thousand-line files with scattered edits compare exactly. The limit is not total size but how much has nothing in common with the other side. When a stretch of roughly two thousand lines cannot be matched to anything, it is reported as removed in full and added in full rather than compared line by line, and the page says so rather than presenting it as the real answer. Comparing by line, or in smaller pieces, gets an exact result.
Is my text sent to your server?
No. The comparison runs in JavaScript this page has already downloaded, so neither text leaves your device and there is nothing on our server to keep or delete. Turn off your network once the page has loaded and it still works, which is the easiest way to check that yourself. The page does tell us once per visit that Text Compare was used, which keeps the counter here: that request carries no body, so none of your text goes with it.