How to compare two versions of a PDF
Updated: 2026-10-14
A contract comes back "with a few small edits", but there's no tracked-changes version. Reading both copies side by side is slow, and a changed number is easy to miss. Here's how to find every difference in seconds.
Compare the text
- Open Compare PDF. Drop the original on the left and the new version on the right.
- Keep Text selected and click Compare.
- Go through the list of changes. Removed words are red in the original and added words are green in the new version, shown side by side on the pages.
Each change in the list shows a few words around it, so "within 30 21 days" makes sense at a glance. Click a change to jump to its page. You can download both PDFs with the changes highlighted, plus a text list of every change, to send to a colleague or keep on file.
What to look at first
- Numbers: amounts, percentages, quantities and deadlines.
- Dates and durations: start dates, notice periods and payment terms.
- Small words that change meaning: "may" and "must", "and" and "or", and "not".
- Removed sentences: deleted text is easier to miss than added text, because there's nothing new to catch your eye.
Scans, images and layout
If one or both versions are scans, there's no text to compare. Switch to Appearance: pages are compared as images, and anything that looks different is marked, including signatures, stamps, logos and moved paragraphs. For a word-by-word comparison of scans, run both through OCR PDF first, then compare the results as text.
Comparing confidential drafts? Both files are compared in your browser and never uploaded.