Text Analysis
Compare Two Texts
Compare two blocks of text and highlight additions and deletions with word or character diff.
About the text comparison tool
Put the original text in the first box and the changed version in the second. Underneath, both are merged into one view, with removed parts marked as deletions and new parts marked as additions. Tick Show only changes to hide everything that matches and keep just the edits. Word diff compares whole words and treats spaces and line breaks as pieces of their own, which reads best for prose. Character diff goes letter by letter, which suits short strings such as codes, URLs or one line of data where a single character matters. Both use a longest common subsequence comparison, the idea behind classic diff tools, so you see the smallest set of additions and deletions that turns one text into the other. Character mode compares every character of one text with every character of the other, so two long texts in that mode can make the page slow. For more than a few paragraphs, stay in word mode. The comparison runs in your browser and neither text is uploaded.
Frequently asked questions
Word diff or character diff?
Word diff for prose, emails, contracts and anything people read, because it shows which words changed without chopping them into fragments. Character diff for short technical strings like IDs, version numbers and single lines, where one changed letter or digit is the whole story.
Does the tool ignore whitespace?
No. In word mode spaces and line breaks are part of the text like any word, so a double space or an extra blank line shows up as a change. If only the words matter, run both versions through Clean Up Text first to collapse extra spaces and blank lines.
Can I compare two files or Word documents?
Not as uploads. Open each file, copy the text and paste it into the two boxes. Bold, comments and tracked changes don't survive the paste, so the comparison covers the words only.
Why does a moved paragraph show as deleted and added?
The comparison keeps both texts in order, so it can only match a paragraph in one place. When you move one, it shows up as removed where it was and added where it now sits. That is how this kind of diff works, not a bug.