What does a text diff tool actually compare?

It finds the longest unchanged sections shared between two texts and highlights everything else as added or removed, similar to how Git shows changes between two versions of a file.

Can I use this to compare code?

Yes, pasting two code snippets works the same way as comparing prose — the tool highlights lines or characters that differ between the two versions.

Does the order of the two texts matter?

It affects which version is labeled as the original versus the changed version in the output, but the actual differences detected are the same either way.

Text Diff Checker

Paste two versions of text and see exactly what changed — line by line.

Original Text

Modified Text

Ignore case Ignore leading/trailing whitespace

How to Use

Paste your original text in the left panel and your modified text in the right panel.
Optionally enable Ignore case or Ignore whitespace for a looser comparison.
Click Compare to see the diff result.
Green lines are additions, red lines are deletions, and plain lines are unchanged.

About this Text Diff Checker

A diff (short for "difference") tool compares two versions of text and highlights exactly what changed — additions, deletions, and modifications — instead of forcing a manual line-by-line read-through of both versions.

How diffing works

The tool aligns both texts and finds the longest matching sequences of unchanged content, then marks whatever falls outside those matches as added or removed. This is the same underlying approach used by source control tools like Git to show what changed between two commits, just applied to any pasted text rather than code files.

Common uses

Editing and proofreading: compare a draft against a revised version to see exactly what an editor changed
Contract review: spot every modification between two versions of a legal document, which can be easy to miss by eye in dense text
Code snippets: compare two versions of a function or config file outside a full version control setup
Content migration: confirm that copied or exported text matches the original exactly, with no accidental truncation or formatting loss

Word-level vs. character-level comparison

Word-level diffing highlights whole words that changed, which is easier to read for prose and long-form text. Character-level diffing catches smaller edits, like a single typo fix or punctuation change, that a word-level view might group into a larger block. Which one is more useful depends on whether you're checking meaning-level edits or precise character accuracy.