A free alternative for comparing documents
The established document-comparison tools are good and they are priced per seat per month: Draftable’s business tier is around $10.75 a user, its legal tier around $21.75, and Litera and the rest sit well above that. For a team comparing contracts all day that is reasonable. For someone who needs to check two drafts this afternoon it is a procurement exercise.
The free online options solve the price and introduce a different problem: they work by uploading both documents to a server. Reddit threads about comparing NDAs and contracts converge on that one complaint, and it is a real one. A draft under negotiation is exactly the document you cannot hand to an unknown third party on the strength of a privacy policy.
This is the third option: free, and local. The comparison runs in the browser tab, so there is nothing to upload and nothing to trust. Below is an honest account of what that does and does not get you.
or drop it here
.pdf · .docx · .txt · .md
or drop it here
.pdf · .docx · .txt · .md
Nothing is uploaded. Both files are read inside this tab.
How to do it
- 01
What it matches
Word-level differences across PDF and .docx including mixed pairs, a redline view and a side-by-side view, moved-block detection, repeated-change detection, page-furniture suppression, a navigable change list, and CSV and print export. No account and no page limit.
- 02
What it does not do
No .docx export with real revision marks. No OCR, so scans cannot be compared. No Word, Outlook or document-management integration. No shared workspace, no audit trail, no per-seat administration. No comparison of comments, footnotes or embedded objects.
- 03
Where the paid tools are genuinely better
If a comparison has to go back into Word as tracked changes, if the work is governed by a retention or audit policy, if it has to run from a document-management system or be scripted over many files, or if a vendor contract and a support line are part of what you are buying, buy the paid tool. Those are not features this could add; they are what the product is.
- 04
Where this is better
When the document must not be uploaded. When there is no budget or no time for procurement. When you are on someone else’s computer, or a Chromebook, or a locked-down laptop where nothing can be installed. And when the whole job is "tell me what changed", which is most of the time.
Why a free tool can be local and a paid one usually is not
It looks like a philosophical difference and it is an economic one. A service that processes documents on a server pays for that server with every comparison, which means it has to meter something: pages, documents, minutes, seats. Once there is metering there is an account, and once there is an account the document has to be uploaded to be associated with it. The architecture follows the billing model.
A tool that runs in the browser has no marginal cost at all. The reader’s own machine does the work, so there is nothing to meter and no reason to cap anything: no page limit, no document count, no watermark, no trial clock. That is not generosity, it is what the architecture permits, and it is why the free tier here is the whole tool rather than a sample of it.
The same architecture is what makes the privacy claim verifiable rather than promissory. A server-based tool can only offer you a policy: it says it deletes your file, and you believe it or you do not. There is no upload endpoint on this site, so there is nothing to believe. Open the network inspector in your browser and compare two documents, and you will see no document data leave the tab. That is a different kind of assurance from a paragraph in a privacy policy, and it is the only kind worth having for a contract under negotiation.
What the architecture costs is equally real, and it is the list above: no integrations, no server-side pipeline, no OCR, no shared state between people. Those all need a server, and a server would need to be paid for, and paying for it would bring back the metering. The trade is deliberate.
Questions
- Is this made by Draftable?
- No. It is an independent tool, named here only to say what it is an alternative to and how the two differ. Draftable is their product and theirs alone.
- Are my documents uploaded?
- No. Both files are read inside the browser tab and never sent anywhere; there is no upload endpoint on this site, so it could not receive them. You can confirm it in your browser’s network inspector: no document data is transmitted.
- What is the catch?
- There is no account, no page limit and no watermark, and the core comparison is free and stays free. The honest limits are architectural rather than commercial, and they are listed above: no OCR, no .docx export with revision marks, no integrations.
- How does it compare with Word’s own Compare feature?
- Word’s is excellent and produces a .docx with real tracked changes, which this cannot. It also needs Word, needs both files on the same machine, and cannot compare a PDF. This runs anywhere with a browser and takes any mix of PDF and .docx.
- Which file types can be compared?
- PDF, Word (.docx), plain text and Markdown, and any combination of them, including a PDF against a Word file. Old .doc files and RTF are not supported; open them in Word and save as .docx first.
- Is it really free?
- Yes. No account, no page limit, no watermark and no trial clock. The comparison runs on your own machine, which is why it costs nothing to offer: there is no server doing the work.
Not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Draftable Pty Ltd, Litera, Microsoft or Adobe. Product names are used only to identify what this tool is an alternative to, which is permitted nominative use.