Best File and Document Comparison Software

Sheetmatcher

Francesco Cortese - IT Solutions

Comparing Excel files is a critical, yet underestimated task. It can become highly time-consuming depending on: - User's level of expertise - files complexity - Specific insights being sought With Sheetmatcher, no prior Excel experience is required. Simply drag and drop two files, select the key field, and you're all set. You will instantly identify discrepancies or missing records. Sheetmatcher guarantees accurate results while significantly reducing the time spent on this task. In Basic Plan: - 3-step guided process - Color-coded report that shows missing records, missing columns, and discrepancies (value file 1 vs value file 2) - Define one or multiple columns as key - Match per column names (no need to rearrange columns manually) - Check Keys are unique Only in the Advanced Plan: - Export of comparison results in Xlsx - Use a mapping file to map the Keys in case they are different - Text-based search to use names as Key (with % success rate)

Starting Price: $5

View Software

Beyond Compare

Compare files and folders using simple, powerful commands that focus on the differences you're interested in and ignore those you're not. Merge changes, synchronize files, and generate reports. Directly access FTP sites, media devices, WebDAV resources, svn repositories and cloud storage. All from your Windows, macOS or Linux workstation. Beyond Compare includes built-in comparison viewers for a variety of data types. In addition to text, compare tables, images, binary files, registry hives, and much more. Beyond Compare allows you to quickly and easily compare your files and folders. By using simple, powerful commands you can focus on the differences you're interested in and ignore those you're not. You can then merge the changes, synchronize your files, and generate reports for your records. You can compare entire drives and folders at high speed, checking just sizes and modified times.

1 Rating

Starting Price: $12 per user

View Software

Draftable

Draftable is an Enterprise-Grade Document Comparison Software that lets users easily spot changes between documents. Draftable’s product suite includes Draftable Online for browser-based comparisons, Draftable Desktop for secure computer-based comparisons, and Draftable API for integrating our dynamic technology into your app. The software features synchronized side-by-side view and a change list that presents all modifications in one place. Users can also export comparisons to a PDF, view text style changes, and compare different file types such as PDF, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Draftable is easy to use, completely secure, and enterprise-ready. Having been used to compare over 10 million documents, it has been perfected and honed for heavy-duty use.

Starting Price: $129 USD per year

View Software

ExamDiff

PrestoSoft

There is no need to specify both file names, just enter a directory name for one of the files to be compared. ExamDiff will try to use an entered filename with a specified directory name. Remembers a user-specified number of last compared first and second files. This allows quick selection of the two files the user wishes to compare. One push re-compare function which attempts to leave the viewer's focus in the same place as before the re-compare. Allows the copying of text from the comparison panes via drag and drop, a hot key, or a right button pop up. Fully customizable file extension filter. The user can choose only .c and .cpp files or any other files he/she chooses to be displayed. Adjustable pane splitter with smooth synchronized scrolling. Allows easy toggling between horizontal and vertical splitter orientation as well as splitter centering and panes hiding.

Starting Price: $34.99 one-time payment

View Software

Draftable Legal

Draftable

Draftable Legal offers fast and accurate redline comparisons for legal teams looking for a cost-effective enterprise-grade solution. It supports multiple file formats including Word, PDF, PPT, Excel, and even scanned documents thanks to its built-in OCR. Users (and administrators within organisations) can customise output results and create and manage preset profiles. Seamless integration with file explorer, DMS, MS Word, and Outlook allows for easy review and export of output. Developed in collaboration with legal professionals, Draftable Legal addresses their unique needs. Leveraging Draftable’s proprietary algorithm, this software accurately detects changes across different types of documents. Its performance comes with expert customer support, making it a reliable and secure document comparison solution that legal professionals can trust.

Starting Price: $199.00

View Software

DocsCorp

Document management professionals turn to DocsCorp when they are looking for easy-to-use software that empowers them to work safer and smarter. We are a global brand with more than 500,000 users in over 65 countries. Our product portfolio is a list of must-have technologies that include document creation, email recipient checking, metadata cleaning, document comparison, PDF creation, and image file conversion to PDF, which can be accessed on the desktop, server or cloud. Our products integrate out-of-the-box with leading enterprise content management systems to streamline processes and to drive business efficiency. We offer organizations a combination of on-premises and cloud integrations. We work with industries that are document-centric to help them manage their most critical asset - documents. This includes Government Departments, Legal Services, Financial Services, and Technology companies.

Starting Price: $49.50/user

View Software

GroupDocs

groupdocs.app

Free Document Manipulation Apps Suite for Windows. Perform easy document conversion, parsing, merging, comparing & signing. Support for more than fifty (50) file formats. Complete document automation offline on your own desktop. It provides documents merging support for Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, PDF, and many other documents. It also facilitates users to compare a wide range of documents for content as well as for style alterations. It has included complete support for viewing, adding, updating, and cleaning metadata for widely used file formats. Moreover, you can easily hide sensitive information (text or metadata) from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and several other documents types with ease. It has also provided an advanced searching feature that allows performing index-based text search in your documents. Features like page zooming, page layout settings, page rotation, and many others are fully supported.

Starting Price: Free

View Software

Copyleaks

We’re a leading AI text analysis platform dedicated to empowering businesses and educational institutions as they navigate the ever-evolving landscape of genAI through responsible AI innovation, balancing technological advancement with integrity, transparency, and ethics. Since our founding in 2015, we’ve harnessed the power of AI to empower authenticity and originality. With an award-winning suite trusted by millions, we ensure AI governance and responsible AI adoption, safeguard IP, confirm copyright compliance, and maintain academic integrity with comprehensive content detection. Copyleaks, where technology meets integrity. The AI Grader By Copyleaks is a cutting-edge AI test grader that boosts efficiency, reduces errors, removes all bias, and accurately grades thousands of tests in minutes.

Starting Price: $7.99

View Software

Altova DiffDog

Altova

DiffDog includes powerful capabilities that let you compare and merge any type of text-based file, with support for Unicode, ASCII, MBCS, and any other file formats. DiffDog allows bi-directional merging as well as direct editing of both compared files. DiffDog automatically creates a backup of each file, allowing you to re-load the original file from the server or disk at any time should you need to start over. The XML differencing and editing features in DiffDog draw on Altova’s legacy as creator of XMLSpy, the world’s leading XML development. With robust features such as well-formedness and validation checking, code completion, DTD/schema based entry helpers, and more, DiffDog is a must-have differencing utility for Web and software developers working with XML.

Starting Price: €109 one-time payment

View Software

Compare PDF

AKS-Labs

Compare PDF is a Windows product designed to help people comparing electronic documents. Document comparison is necessary when people need to learn what changes were made in file's text and if the changes are correct. The basic and obvious ability to compare files word by word was developed for files that have a common ancestor. It is useful in a case you have two versions of the same document. Folder comparison enables setup monitoring of changes for any project or web-site. Compare PDF was specially designed to work with paperless PDF files. The significant new feature for consumers appeared in Compare PDF 2.0, comparison by keywords, which was developed to help people to compare non-related documents. You could never notice the difference unless using comparison by keywords.

Starting Price: $35 one-time payment

View Software

DiffPDF

If you produce PDFs for publication, a PDF comparison tool can show you the exact differences between, say, the first printing, and your proposed second printing. This way you can easily spot unintended changes to the pagination. Also, you can save time by checking only those pages that have changed, rather than having to review the whole publication all over again. Statements and policies must always have the correct disclaimers and other legal information. When formats or policies change, it is vital that the changes are only those intended something easily verifiable with a PDF comparison tool. It is common to follow a paper trail of emails, memos, and so on, as part of an investigation. This trail will often include PDF documents. Using a PDF comparison tool will allow you to forensically observe the evolution of a document—perhaps revealing when critical changes were made.

Starting Price: $160 one-time payment

View Software

Diffchecker

Bring a powerful text, image and file comparison app to your desktop. Available for Windows, macOS and Linux. Take advantage of all Diffchecker features such as unified diff view, character-level diffs and more. Keep your files confidential and private – with Diffchecker Desktop they never leave your computer. Since Diffchecker Desktop runs fully on your computer, it doesn’t communicate with our servers to create your diffs. What this means is that there’s no way anybody else but you can view your sensitive data. Diffchecker Desktop runs offline which means you can use it wherever you are and save on your data plan. As everything happens locally on your own computer, you also get significantly improved app speed. Diffchecker's Dark Mode has been specifically designed to help you stay productive in low-light environments, reduce eye strain and conserve battery power all while serving you elegant looks and powerful functionality.

Starting Price: $6 per month

View Software

Kaleidoscope

Spot the differences in text and image files, or even folders full of files. Review changes in seconds, with the world's most powerful file comparison app. Sometimes you want to get rid of all the UI and just focus on the content. Using a single shortcut, the new Reader view hides all non-essential window chrome and puts your content front and center. Kaleidoscope finds the most readable way to express changes, instead of just displaying what is simplest for a computer to parse. Our custom comparison engine is designed to give you the clearest possible overview. Whether it's an article, an important letter, a legal contract, or source code, Kaleidoscope helps you manage text changes from inception to finished document. Kaleidoscope extracts and compares text, from many document formats, such as Word and PDF files.

Starting Price: $149.99 one-time payment

View Software

Diff Doc

SoftInterface

Being able to compare documents easily, quickly and accurately is essential to your workflow. Now you can have it with 'Diff Doc' - your one-stop document comparison solution for file comparisons of all types. 'Diff Doc' can display the file differences in two possible views, 'All In One' or 'Side By Side.’ Both views have their advantages and switching between them is as easy as a mouse click. Lastly, there is a large selection of report types and options available for sharing the differences found with your peers. 'Diff Doc' was built to make file comparisons a quick and easy saving you time. You can even schedule/automate comparisons. Command line capability is fundamental to all of our software tools. We are always here to help you implement our software. Choose any portion of any document and compare it against any portion of the same or different document. Change the colors and formatting used to highlight the document changes.

Starting Price: $299.95 one-time payment

View Software

Araxis Merge

Araxis

Identify in context every change made between two or three source code hierarchies. Create a standalone HTML or XML report of your findings. Add bookmarks and comments to a file or folder comparison, then save it as a single-file archive for emailing to other team members for review. Whether you are working with multiple revisions of text files or need to keep multiple folder hierarchies in sync (for example, between a desktop and laptop machine), Merge could help save time and reduce errors by helping you to work quickly and accurately. Compare different source code branches to give total confidence that you know and understand every change made to every file for a specific release. Compare product releases to be certain that only the expected files have been modified. Create an HTML or XML report of changes for audit purposes.

Starting Price: $129 one-time payment

View Software

Aspose.Total Comparison

Aspose

Aspose.Total Comparison has provided complete functionality for efficiently comparing multiple files online with ease. File comparison is a very useful operation that matches different files with each other to find out any differences. The online free comparison app has provided support for several leading document formats such as PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, VSDX, HTML, EPUB, RTF, XPS, ODT, ODP, and many more. The app is built by using state of the art Aspose APIs which smoothly works on all major platforms including Windows, Mac, Android and iOS. In order to use the app you don’t need to install it on your machine, you just need a modern browser like Chrome, Opera and Firefox. To compare two documents for differences you need to select the files using the file selection area and press the “COMPARE” button. After the successful documents comparison operation users can download the resultant file highlighting the difference.

Starting Price: Free

View Software

Liquid Studio

Liquid Technologies

Liquid Studio provides an advanced toolkit for XML and JSON development along with Web Service Testing and Data Mapping and Data Transformation tools. The Development Environment contains a complete set of tools for designing XML and JSON data structures and schemas. These tools provide editing, validating and advanced transformation capabilities. For novice or expert, the intuitive interface and comprehensive features will help you save time and money delivering a successful project. Visualize and edit an abstracted view of your XML schema(XSD) using an intuitive user interface, and validate your XSD against the W3C standards.Includes split graphical and text views, intellisense, syntax highlighting, drag and drop, copy and paste, and multi-step undo/redo. Visualize and edit an abstracted view of your JSON schema using an intuitive user interface, and validate your JSON Schema against the IETF standards.

Starting Price: $149 one-time payment

View Software

Adlib

Adlib Software

Adlib Software is a content intelligence and automation platform that makes it easy to discover, standardize, and leverage clean structured data from complex unstructured documents. We help businesses drive digital transformation that amplifies human potential and maximizes business performance. Through our enterprise-grade document conversion tools, our global customers reduce risk, simplify compliance, automate processes, improve customer experience, and accelerate time to market. Adlib is designed for businesses in banking, insurance, manufacturing, energy and life sciences. It lets organizations utilize artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) technologies to cleanse data from unstructured content and automate content acquiring, accessing and delivering processes, whilst maintaining compliance with GDPR, CCPA, IFRS 17 and LIBOR regulations.

View Software

NOVO Compare

Evolution Software

Traditional document comparison software has become bloated, overcomplicated, and expensive throughout the years. This kind of software will slow production time and increase the likelihood of errors. NOVO Compare delivers light, fast, and accurate comparison tools, supercharging the technologies inside Office legal professionals already use most. Legal organizations use NOVO Compare to create a consistent document review process and increase document review efficiency across all departments. Designed specifically to improve the user experience by reducing unnecessary clicks. Instantly return the answers you need to keep work moving with NOVO’s QuickCompare feature. Thanks to integrations with the leading document management providers, pull relevant documents together and run comparisons with lightning speed. Which positions your team to expedite the review process and summarize entire sets of documents like never before.

Starting Price: $99 per year

View Software

GlobalVision

Built for use in production environments, GlobalVision Desktop combines our most powerful inspection tools into one robust application – so you can be sure your files are accurate as they move along the quality workflow. Check artwork files with pixel to pixel accuracy by automatically overlaying master and sample files to detect any differences between the two. Verify and grade barcodes without the use of a scanner by inspecting them directly in the electronic file. Inspect, verify, and translate Braille to ensure it's accurate and meets regulatory requirements. Verify color accuracy anywhere on your artwork by measuring individual color space values with built-in Pantone books. Run side-by-side comparisons of two files to identify any differences between them. Check artwork files to previous versions to ensure work is accurate before production.

View Software

DiffMerge

Sourcegear

DiffMerge is an application to visually compare and merge files on Windows, OS X and Linux. Graphically shows the changes between two files. Includes intra-line highlighting and full support for editing. Graphically shows the changes between 3 files. Allows automatic merging (when safe to do so) and full control over editing the resulting file. Performs a side-by-side comparison of 2 folders, showing which files are only present in one file or the other, as well as file pairs which are identical or different. Right-click on any two files in Windows Explorer to diff them immediately. Rulesets and options provide for customized appearance and behavior. Identical feature set on Windows, OS X, and Linux. Graphically shows the changes between two files. Includes intra-line highlighting and full support for editing. DiffMerge is a UNICODE-based application and can import files in a wide range of character encodings.

View Software

Pretty Diff

Pretty Diff is a language-aware code comparison tool, beautifier, minifier, and parser for a variety of languages. Pretty Diff was created to compare code samples for various languages regardless of differences in comments, white space, and other factors. Currently, the project operates by beautifying code and then comparing the beautified product of the code samples. The goal in a future version is to introduce the comparison step directly into the beautifiers between the parse step and the beautification step to become a truly language-aware code comparison and analysis tool. The code comparison mode is the default mode and the only mode to require two code samples. Pretty Diff has progressively moved from community-driven dependencies to custom parsers to accomplish code beautification for a diversity of features and requests. Each of Pretty Diff's beautification libraries has a minify feature.

View Software

Kompare

KDE

Kompare is a free software graphical computer application that helps the user to compare two different text files or two directories. Kompare does not actually compute the differences between the compared files itself, but is merely a graphical front end to the command line interface diff utility. However, the colour coding of changed lines makes them very easy to spot. Comparison of files or directories via a graphical interface. Bezier-based connection widget lets you see both source and destination as they really appear. Graphical viewing of patch files in normal, context, unified and diff formats. Graphical interface to commonly used diff command-line options. Easy navigation of multiple-file diffs with the dockable navigation tree. Ability to view plain-text diff output in the embedded viewer. Interactive application of differences. Provides full network transparency.

View Software

UltraCompare

UltraEdit

UltraCompare rapidly compares 2 or 3 files from multiple locations at once, and merge conflicts and differences visually. Quickly launch a compare by drag-and-drop into the application, from the File Explorer context menu, or even via the command line. Whether you prefer a darker look, or a more classic white-based skin, UltraCompare's interface is completely themeable, and comes with several themes hand crafted at IDM. If you design a theme you'd like to share with the rest of our users, send us a pull request on GitHub, or simply email it to our support team. UltraCompare's powerful compare functions work just as well over FTP, and even network shares and connected drives. Simply click to open from FTP, choose your connection or create a new one to save for future use. It's perfect for quickly checking local files and folders against what's already on the server. UltraCompare's special document handling makes it easy to compare Word and PDF files.

Starting Price: $79.95 per year

View Software

Compare and Merge

Compare and Merge is the Windows file compare utility for detecting and merging differences between text files and folders, compare source code, compare program output, etc. Compare and Merge shows you the differences between files side-by-side and makes it easy to resolve these differences. Source code, output files, HTML, XML, etc. Compare source code to older versions and identify what has changed. C++, Visual Basic, Perl, PHP, Delphi, etc. Merge your changes and those of your co-workers into one master copy. Select and click to merge a single line or an entire section of text. Unlimited undo/redo. Analyze file differences for entire folder branches. Can be used directly from the Explorer's context menu. Many customization options, fonts, colors, comparison algorithm. Works like a text editor, you can fully edit text while comparing, with dynamic refreshing. Summary bar gives quick feedback of all differences.

Starting Price: $24.95 one-time payment

View Software

Active File Compare

Formula Software

Active File Compare is an advanced utility for the comparison and synchronization of any text files in visual mode, it reports the results of the comparison in two side-by-side windows on the screen, the differing lines being marked with special color icons. This utility is an excellent tool for comparing source code versions since it allows you to correct the source code and also supports syntax highlighting for the programming languages C++, C#, Java, Visual Basic, Delphi, Object Pascal, SQL, Perl, Assembler, Fortran, Foxpro etc. and for HTML, PHP, XML, INI and BAT files. You can also use it to manage the source code when several independent authors make changes. The algorithm of comparing is designed in such a way that it's always very accurate in finding differences both in small text files and in files with a large number of changes. Active File Compare has its own file manager consisting of two side-by-side windows.

Starting Price: $7.95 one-time payment

View Software

SmartSynchronize

Syntevo

Comparing directories the smart way. SmartSynchronize is an advanced file and directory comparison tool. SmartSynchronize is a multi-platform file and directory compare tool. It allows you to compare files or perform a 3-way-merges, both with the ability to edit the file contents. SmartSynchronize is optimized for comparing directory structures (for example, of software projects), and can keep them synchronized. Comfortable editing and transfer of changes from one file to the other. Configurable filter for customized directory scanning (inclusion and exclusion). Easy transfer of changes from one directory structure to another. Automatic synchronization depending on file times and previous synchronization time. Ability to edit each of the three files. Command-line interface for easy invocation from other applications. Configurable font, colors and accelerators. Support for all major text file encodings.

Starting Price: $49 one-time payment

View Software

DirDiff

yoy.be

DirDiff started as a tool to check two copies of files in separate directories, either by date or by a different modified date. From there, we had a go at building our own text-diff. Other diff's show the content of both files, and thus show the content that is equal twice. Sounds like a lot of wasted screen-space, so we show a single 'flow' and the different parts in different colors. Yes, we know we might have got green and red reversed, but since we use diff primarily to check what we've changed before commit, We like them to show up in red because it draws attention. It can also show the structure of XML documents in a tree view. If you configure the usual attribute names that holds identifying values, it will use those to show the relevant changes. If you're using TortoiseSVN, it turns out to be a good alternative diff to use with TortoiseSVN, open the settings and enter the command provided in our site for the external Diff Viewer.

View Software

TortoiseMerge

TortoiseSVN

Version control is all about having the history of your working progress. But to really see and check the history, you must be able to see and check what has changed between two points in time, for example, what has changed between two releases of your product, or what was changed to fix a bug, etc. This is where TortoiseMerge helps. It is a diff/merge software tool for Windows with a tight integration for TortoiseSVN. At least for files that consist of text, TortoiseMerge can help you here. It shows you the two versions of a file side-by-side, coloring every modified line in that file. When you reformat your code or text, sometimes you don't really change anything but only split a long line into multiple ones, or you merge multiple lines into one. TortoiseMerge marks such changes with a white circle on the left gray bar of each view. If you see such a white circle, you know that no real changes were made, only changes in whitespaces.

View Software

Content Compare

DeltaXignia

Content Compare is a SaaS solution used to identify and list differences between files in XML format. Any well-formed XML can be compared but there are currently versions optimised for the following XML grammars: S1000D, JATS, BITS, NISO-STS and XSL-FO. Content Compare is designed to integrate seamlessly into your workflows, accurately identifying differences between content while intelligently preserving and ignoring structural changes. In order to ensure data accuracy, maintaining compliance with specified XML grammars is paramount. With Content Compare as your trusted companion, you can easily tackle finding changes between XML text, confident that every detail is meticulously examined, while preserving the integrity of the grammatical structure. With Content Compare, you gain not only a powerful comparison solution but also a valuable asset that enhances your overall productivity and efficiency. Content Compare can manage large files up to 50MB+.

Starting Price: $499/year/user

View Software

Compare the Top File and Document Comparison Software as of May 2025

What is File and Document Comparison Software?

Sheetmatcher

Beyond Compare

Draftable

ExamDiff

Draftable Legal

DocsCorp

GroupDocs

Copyleaks

Altova DiffDog

Compare PDF

DiffPDF

Diffchecker

Kaleidoscope

Diff Doc

Araxis Merge

Aspose.Total Comparison

Liquid Studio

Adlib

NOVO Compare

GlobalVision

DiffMerge

Pretty Diff

Kompare

UltraCompare

Compare and Merge

Active File Compare

SmartSynchronize

DirDiff

TortoiseMerge

Content Compare