Looking for a free online document comparison tool? Here are 5 free online document comparison tools which can easily distinguish the textual content of two documents online. Documents like .doc, .docx, .rtf, .pptx, .ppt, .pdf, .html, etc. are supported in these tools. You can also paste two texts in these tools to know their differences. Source codes in C, C++, C#, Java, Perl, PHP, HTML, XML, etc. languages can also be compared in some of them. They follow the similar approach to highlight differences in two documents, which are highlighted in red and green.
These tools offer a parallel view to visualize document comparison. Some of them also generate a shareable link of comparison which can be shared with other people. You can go through this list to know more about each of these online document comparison tools.
Also See:
Draftable:
Draftable is a free online document comparison tool. You can compare text of two documents side by side and view similarities and changes between the two. It accepts documents in formats of .doc, .docx, .docm, .rtf, .pptx, .pptm, .ppt, and .pdf. You can add two document files by browsing them or simply drop them into it one by one. As soon as you click compare documents option, it will start comparing the two documents. When it finishes document comparison, it displays the content of both documents in a parallel view. The text content which is there in left document but not in right document is highlighted with Red color. While the text which is there in the right document but not in the left document is highlighted with Green color. Hence, you can easily identify that how much similarities both the documents hold.
It offers a handy option named Sync Scrolling using which you may scroll through both the documents together. If not, you can scroll both the documents independently too. You can switch on fullscreen mode to view and analyze comparison between both the documents. It can also generate a shareable link of the comparison between two documents. This link can be shared with colleagues or friends to allow them to view document comparison. It also creates an HTML Embed Code to embed the comparison into your website.
Note: There is a size limit to compare documents with this free online tool. The maximum file size can be up to 40 MB and the page limit is 600 pages.
DiffNow:
DiffNow is a free online document comparison tool which allows one to compare two documents. It even lets you compare manually insert texts and also files from two URLs. You can compare doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, pdf, etc. documents, source codes in C, C++, C#, Java, Perl, PHP, etc. languages, and also archive files like RAR and 7-Zip.
With the use of this free online tool, you can compare an old document with a new document. After comparing files, it shows the number of changes between two documents along with inline differences. It also presents lines that are added, deleted, Changed, inline changes in changed lines, and ignored in the new document. You may also click on a line number to compare the same line from the two documents.
Here are some nice features of this online document comparison tool:
- It allows you to download a comparison report in the format of .htm.
- It even lets you share comparison report, but this requires you to register an account on its website.
- You can study document comparison in fullscreen in this tool.
- It offers some options to organize your preferences for document comparison, e.g. ignore lines blank lines, ignore white space in lines,
split results horizontally, show only differences, customize highlight colors, and more.
Note: There are some limitations to this free tool. First 2048 KB will be compared, 5 comparisons a day and 15 if you have registered an account, 2000 line difference report limit, ads are displayed on the website. These restrictions can be eliminated if only you buy the premium subscription.
PDF24 Tools:
PDF24 Tools compares two PDF documents to allow you to view differences between two documents. Other documents files like doc, docx, rtf, etc. can also be compared with this tool. It even allows you to import documents from Dropbox or Google Drive for comparison. You don’t get a visual side by side comparison but the textual comparison in this tool. Although it offers a visual mode option to select, but that doesn’t seem to be working as of now.
It displays text which are identical in both with no formatting. While it highlights text, which is present in the right document but not left one in Green, the text which is present in the left one but not right and is stricken out and highlighted in Red. It doesn’t contain size or any other limitation. You can freely use this tool to effortlessly compare old and new documents in it.
Mergely:
Mergely is a free online document comparison tool which finds out changes between two document and also merges the differences. The document files can be imported from local storage or even from URLs. You can merge changes to the left document or right document to make both the documents identical. You may also edit text in its editor. If you don’t want that, you can make the documents read-only.
You can find a text within the documents. Some easy view options e.g. swap view, view previous change, view next changes, etc. are given in this online document comparison tool. User control options like wrap lines, ignore white spaces, ignore case, enable viewport, color settings, etc. are also present in it.
TextCompare
TextCompare is a free online tool for you to compare documents. You can import two documents in various formats and compare their textual content. It provides an editor where you can paste two texts to compare and find the difference between them. Apart from normal texts, it can compare source codes of programming languages like JSON, XML, YAML, CSP, HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Java, Razor, Redshift, SQL, etc. It compares plain text only without formatting. It displays comparison in a parallel view with a synchronized scroll button. You may also change the comparison view to Inline Difference mode.
A handy option to save differences for a day, week, month, or a year is also present in this tool. This option is useful as it generates a unique shareable link which can be shared with other people to let them see document comparison.
Conclusion:
These free online document comparison tools are extremely useful in finding differences between an old and a modified version of a document. All of them work efficiently and are hassle-free. I personally found Draftable better than other tools because it can compare documents in many formats. It compares the documents with original formatting and not just as plain text. It can also generate shareable links which can be sent to other people to allow them to analyze the difference between documents. Other tools are also fairly good. You can try any of these as you find suitable and do let me know your experience.
