Text comparison · free · nothing uploaded
Compare two PDFs
Your texts stay on your computer. Nothing is uploaded.
- 0bytes uploaded: the comparison runs on your device, even offline.
- 3levels of detail: line, word, character.
- 100%free: no account, no cookies, no ads.
Paste or drop two texts: their differences will appear here.
Drop a PDF in each box: difftool.fr extracts their text and highlights everything that differs between the two versions. The PDF is read by your browser, not uploaded, so contracts, terms and conditions or official documents stay on your computer.
How to compare two PDF files
- Click “Open a file” above each box, or drag your PDFs onto them.
- The text of each PDF appears in its box, page after page.
- The differences show up right away: red and struck through for what was removed, blue and underlined for what was added.
Files can be up to 20 MB each. Once the text is extracted, you can edit it in the boxes, for instance to remove a header that gets in the way.
What is compared
difftool.fr compares the text of the PDFs, not how they look: an image, a colour or a different font are not reported. The text is read in the order the PDF stores it, one line of the document per line. Page headers, footers and page numbers are included.
A PDF splits text according to its layout. If a paragraph was reworked, its line breaks no longer fall in the same places: a word that moved from one line to the next shows as removed on one side and added on the other. The words that really changed are still easy to spot, as they are highlighted one by one.
PDFs that cannot be read
- Scanned PDF: it only contains an image of each page, with no text. difftool.fr shows a message. Run it through text recognition software (OCR) first.
- Password-protected PDF: it cannot be opened. Remove the protection, then drop it again.
- Multi-column layout: the text is read in the file’s order, which does not always follow the reading order. The comparison is still correct, but may be harder to read.
Frequently asked questions
Is my PDF uploaded to a server?
No. The PDF is opened by your browser, on your device, and its text is extracted there. Only the PDF reader is downloaded from difftool.fr, the first time; the document itself never leaves your computer.
Why is my PDF not showing?
Most of the time, it is a scanned PDF: it only contains images, with no text to compare. A message says so. A password-protected or damaged PDF cannot be read either.
Are images and layout compared?
No, only the text is: images, colours and fonts are not reported. If the layout changed, though, some line breaks may have moved, and they will show up in the comparison.
Can I compare a PDF with a Word document?
Yes: drop the .pdf on one side and the .docx on the other. The text of both is extracted, then compared. Word gives one paragraph per line and the PDF one line per line of the page, so expect some differences in how lines are split; changed words are still highlighted one by one.
How can I keep a record of the differences?
The “Print / PDF” button produces a new PDF with all the differences highlighted, ready to attach to an email or a file. It follows the view you chose: side by side or unified.