100% client-side — files never leave your device

Compare two PDFs

Load an original and a revised PDF and see precisely which lines were added or removed, with page numbers, a change summary and a report you can send on.

Original documentdrop a PDF or click to browse
Changed documentdrop a PDF or click to browse

How it works

  1. Load both versions. Original on the left, revised on the right. Text is extracted locally.
  2. Read the summary. Lines added, lines removed, pages affected, and the share of the document that moved.
  3. Export the report. A plain-text diff with page numbers, ready to paste into a review thread.

Reading a document diff

Comparison works on text in reading order, so a line present in both documents anchors the alignment and everything else falls out as an insertion or a deletion. A sentence that moved therefore appears twice: removed in one place, added in another. That is how diffs work, and it is usually what you want to see.

Why whitespace normalisation is on by default

Change a margin, a font size or a page break, and every paragraph re-wraps. The words are identical but the lines are not, and a strict comparison would flag the entire document. Normalising spacing before comparing strips that noise out and leaves the substantive edits.

What this cannot tell you

It compares words, not appearance. A logo swap, a colour change, a moved table or a different signature block are invisible to it. For those, export both versions with PDF to PNG and compare the images page by page.

Scans

A scanned PDF contains no text, so there is nothing to compare. Run each one through OCR first and compare the searchable exports — bearing in mind that OCR differences can produce diffs of their own.

Frequently asked questions

What exactly is compared?

The text, line by line, in reading order — the same longest-common-subsequence approach git uses. Layout, fonts, images and colours are not compared, so a re-styled document with identical wording shows as unchanged.

Are my documents uploaded?

No. Both files are read and compared inside your browser, which matters when the two versions are contract drafts.

Why does re-formatting show up as changes?

If a paragraph was re-wrapped, its lines break at different points and no longer match. Leave “Ignore whitespace and re-wrapping” on — it normalises spacing before comparing, which removes most of that noise.

Can it compare scanned PDFs?

Only if they have a text layer. Run each scan through the OCR tool first, export the searchable version, then compare those.

What is in the downloaded report?

A plain-text summary — both filenames, page counts, totals, the comparison options used — followed by every added and removed line tagged with its page number. It is designed to be pasted into an email or a ticket.

Related tools