PaperDiff

Redline two drafts of a contract

A redline is not a list of differences. It is the document, readable top to bottom, with what went struck through and what arrived marked, so that a person can read the new version and see the negotiation in it at the same time. It is how amendments get circulated, and it is what the other side expects to receive.

This produces one from any two drafts, in the browser, in a second. It also produces the list, because the two answer different questions: the redline is for reading, the list is for working through and ticking off.

Originalthe earlier draft

or drop it here

.pdf · .docx · .txt · .md

Revisedthe one to check

or drop it here

.pdf · .docx · .txt · .md

Nothing is uploaded. Both files are read inside this tab.

How to do it

  1. 01

    Load the two drafts

    The version you sent on the left, the version that came back on the right. PDF, .docx or any mix.

  2. 02

    Switch to the redline view

    One continuous reading of the new draft, with removed wording struck through in red, added wording underlined in green, and relocated blocks marked in violet. Untouched clauses fold away in groups so the amendments are not separated by nine pages of boilerplate.

  3. 03

    Check the repeated changes first

    A renamed defined term is one decision applied in twenty places. It is reported at the top of the change list, with its count, before the individual occurrences, which is also how you check that the rename was applied consistently rather than mostly.

  4. 04

    Circulate it

    Print to PDF for a version that reads like the redlines everybody already circulates, or copy the summary into the covering email. Both are produced on your machine.

The three things a contract comparison has to get right

A moved clause is not a deletion. Lift a clause out of section 4, drop it into section 12, and every word-level comparison in existence reports a deletion in one place and an unrelated insertion in another. A reader then has to work out by hand that nothing was lost, and on a long document that is exactly the check that gets skipped. Here the two halves are paired and reported as one move, with both page numbers. The pairing is deliberately EXACT, word for word: a clause that moved and was also edited stays a deletion plus an insertion, because the edit is where the amendment hides and calling it "moved" would bury it.

A renamed defined term is one amendment, not twenty. Change Confidential Information to Protected Information and the comparison correctly finds every occurrence. Every one is true, every one is identical, and the thing that matters, one decision applied everywhere, is in none of them. Repeated substitutions are therefore detected and named before the list begins. The individual occurrences are still listed, because the question "was it renamed consistently" can only be answered by visiting all of them.

A replaced clause is one change, not seven. Two unrelated clauses still share the vocabulary of the contract around them (disclosing party, this agreement, notice), and a word-level comparison will anchor on those coincidences and report the replacement as a handful of nonsense substitutions: at became forty words, party’s own cost, and became party reasonably requires. Those islands of accidental agreement are swallowed back into the change that surrounds them, but only inside a single paragraph: two edits in different clauses are two amendments however few words sit between them.

None of the three is cosmetic. Each one is the difference between a change list a person can work down and a change list they stop trusting, and a comparison that is not trusted gets re-done by eye, which is where the missed amendment comes from.

Questions

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.
Is a redline the same thing as tracked changes?
They look similar and come from different places. Tracked changes are a record Word keeps while someone edits; a redline is produced by comparing two finished versions, and needs no cooperation from whoever made the second one. If the other side sent a clean document with no revision marks, a comparison is the only way to see what they did.
Can I export the redline as a Word document?
Not currently. You can print it, which the browser turns into a PDF with the marks intact, and you can copy the summary as formatted text, or export the change list as CSV. A .docx with real revision marks in it is a different job from comparing, and this tool does not pretend to do it.
Is this safe for a confidential draft?
That is what it is built for. Neither document is uploaded, there is no server-side processing of any kind, and no account to create. The comparison happens in the browser tab and the files never leave the machine, which is a materially different position from any tool that asks you to upload a draft under negotiation.
Does it understand clause numbering?
It reads numbered clauses as their own paragraphs, which is what keeps a heading separate from the clause under it. What it does not do is renumber or cross-check references: if clause 6 was deleted and everything after it renumbered, that is reported as the many small changes it is, because that is what happened to the text.
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.