# Compare Text

Compare two pieces of text and find the differences, down to the changed words inside a line. Free, no signup, and neither text is uploaded.

Canonical page: https://filetity.com/compare-text

## Capabilities

- Free: Yes, with no watermark and no page limit.
- Account required: No. There is no account system.
- Processed on device: Yes. The file is read by your browser and never uploaded. There is no server to send it to.
- Formats: Any two pieces of text. Prose, code, CSV, logs and configuration all work the same way.
- Limits: Up to 50,000 lines a side. Two texts sharing thousands of lines in a very different order are refused with a suggestion, because that case costs far more than its size suggests.
- Mobile: Yes, on any modern mobile browser. Large files are limited by the memory the phone gives the browser.
- Offline: Yes, once the page has loaded. The tool keeps working with no network connection.

## Questions

### Why does it show changed words instead of just changed lines?

Because a line diff on a paragraph tells you almost nothing. When two lines are similar enough to be a modification of one another, the words are compared as well and only the parts that moved are highlighted. Lines that share less than half their characters are treated as one removal and one unrelated addition instead, which is the honest description of what happened.

### Do Windows and Mac line endings count as differences?

No. A file saved with CRLF endings and the same file saved with LF endings compare as identical, and so does a file with a trailing newline against one without. Those differences are real but they are never what somebody is looking for, and reporting them buries the ones that are.

### Why was my comparison refused when the files are not that big?

Because the cost of a diff is not the size of the input. Two files sharing thousands of identical lines in a shuffled order are the expensive case, and it can take several seconds where a much larger file with a few edits takes milliseconds. Sorting both sides and comparing again usually answers the question you actually had.

### What do the ignore options actually do?

Ignore case compares letters without regard to capitals. Ignore edge spaces strips leading and trailing whitespace before comparing, which is what you want when an editor has reindented a file. Ignore blank lines skips empty lines entirely, and the line numbers still refer to the original text so the gutter stays useful.

### Can it compare two files rather than pasted text?

Paste is the input here. Open both files, copy each into a box, and compare. Keeping it to paste means the tool works identically for a snippet out of a chat, a block from a terminal and the contents of a file, which is most of what people are comparing.

## Related tools

- [JSON diff](https://filetity.com/json-diff): Compare two JSON documents and see exactly what differs.
- [Character Counter](https://filetity.com/character-counter): Count characters and words live, against the limits you are writing for.