Why Compare PDFs?

Comparing PDFs saves time, reveals unexpected or unwelcome changes, and helps you avoid costly mistakes.

Authors & Publishers: If you produce PDFs for publication, a PDF comparison tool can show you the exact differences between, say, the first printing, and your proposed second printing. This way you can easily spot unintended changes to the pagination. Also, you can save time by checking only those pages that have changed, rather than having to review the whole publication all over again.
Bankers and Insurers: Statements and policies must always have the correct disclaimers and other legal information. When formats or policies change, it is vital that the changes are only those intended—something easily verifiable with a PDF comparison tool.
Journalists, Police, and Other Investigators: It is common to follow a paper trail of emails, memos, and so on, as part of an investigation. This trail will often include PDF documents. Using a PDF comparison tool will allow you to forensically observe the evolution of a document—perhaps revealing when critical changes were made.
Legal Professionals, Legislators, & Freelancers: When a contract, legislation, or other legal document is being drawn up, how can you be sure that the changes made are correct, and are only those agreed? By using a PDF comparison tool you can see exactly what has changed between the latest draft and any previous draft.
Linguists/Translators: Translations often go through many drafts. A PDF comparison tool can easily show the differences between the current draft and any previous draft. This makes it much easier to focus on the parts that have been changed rather than having to reread the whole PDF every time.
Managers: As reports and other documents are developed they go through many changes. If your company process uses PDFs, using a PDF comparison tool will show you how each new version differs from its predecessor. This saves you having to reread everything, and makes it much easier to see what changes you want to comment on or change.
Software Testers & Quality Assurance Engineers: Many business processes produce PDFs as an output. Using a PDF comparison tool makes it easy to verify that the PDFs (or PDF print data streams) are being produced correctly, or to spot exactly where any mistakes have occurred. And this can be especially useful as part of an automated testing process, itself essential if the numbers or sizes of the PDFs is large.

The DiffPDF application makes it easy for anyone to compare PDF files: simply choose the first PDF, then the second PDF, and then click the Compare button. The changes are shown as if you'd used highlighter pens to show added, changed, or deleted text. Some customers report it as superior in functionality and far faster than Adobe Acrobat's Diff tool.

The comparepdfcmd tool is for more technical users. It is a command line tool that can be used stand-alone or in batch files, C# programs, Visual Basic scripts, and so on, to be integrated into quality assurance or software test automation processes. It is even faster than DiffPDF.

Our PDF comparison tools are well-established. Some have been successfully used in all the roles described above—and many others—for many years. They are in use in more than sixty countries throughout the world. They are widely used in the financial sector (especially by banks and insurance companies), as well as by many Government departments.

Note that unlike online PDF comparison tools our tools have no intrinsic page limits. Furthermore, they compare your PDFs securely on your own computer, so no third party can see what you are comparing. In fact, some customers use our tools entirely offline for maximum security.

Each product is sold and licensed separately.

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