Contract Redline Compare

About the Contract Redline Compare

When the other side sends back “a few small changes”, you need to see every one of them: the 30 days that became 45, the “not” that disappeared, the clause that moved to the end. Paste or choose the two versions — Word documents, PDFs or plain text — and the tool lines them up paragraph by paragraph and compares each changed paragraph word by word, the way a lawyer’s redline (or blackline) shows it: insertions underlined, deletions struck through.

It matches clauses by their wording, not their position, so a new clause near the top does not make everything after it look changed; clauses that only changed their number are left out unless you ask for them, and a paragraph that moved is shown as moved, with any edits inside it. A summary lists every change in plain words (“Clause 2.1: “30” changed to “45””), and Previous change and Next change step through them. The free preview shows every count with the first changes; the full redline, the PDF, the Word file with real tracked changes, the HTML file and Copy summary need a Premium pass. Both versions are read on your device and never uploaded.

Common uses

• Checking what the other side changed in a draft before you sign or reply, especially when they sent a clean copy without tracked changes.
• Comparing the signed PDF with the last agreed Word draft, to be sure nothing slipped in.
• Sending a client or a colleague a redline they can read without Word, as a PDF or a web page.
• Turning a clean revised draft into a Word file with tracked changes, so every change can be accepted or rejected one by one.

How the comparison works

Both versions are split into paragraphs and clauses, using the clause numbers (5., 5.2, (a), (iv), Article III, Schedule 1). Paragraphs whose words are the same are matched first; each remaining paragraph is paired with the most similar one in the same part of the other version, and those pairs are compared word by word, so the redline shows the words deleted and inserted, not whole lines. A paragraph that appears almost unchanged somewhere else is shown as moved — once, where it now is, with any edits inside it marked — instead of as one deletion and one insertion.

Numbers, amounts and percentages count as single words (5,00,000 or 12.5%), so a changed amount shows as one change. Ignore renumbering (on by default) leaves out clauses whose only change is their number because a clause was added or removed above them; switch it off to see every renumbering as a change.

Word files with tracked changes

The Word download can be a document with real tracked changes: the revised wording with each deletion and insertion recorded as a Word revision, under the name you gave the revised version. Open it in Word (or another word processor that reads tracked changes) and use Review to step through the changes and accept or reject each one — useful when a counterparty sends a clean copy instead of a marked-up one. An added or removed clause is one revision, its number included; a clause that moved is deleted where it was and inserted where it is, with a comment at both places. So accepting every change gives the revised wording and rejecting every change the original. The summary of changes comes first, on a page of its own that you delete when you are done. The formatted redline writes the same marks as plain formatting (blue underline, red strike-through, green for moved text) that cannot be accepted by accident and prints the same everywhere.

A Word file you choose as input is read with its tracked changes accepted; the status line says how many there were.

Word, PDF and pasted text

Word documents are read with the clause numbers Word shows, which copied text often loses. From a PDF the text layer is read and its printed lines are joined back into paragraphs, so a Word draft and a PDF of the same text compare as equal. A scanned PDF has no text layer: run PDF OCR on it first. To compare how the pages of two PDFs look — drawings, stamps, layout — use Compare PDF Files, which also compares them pixel by pixel.

What it does not compare

Only the words are compared: bold, italics, fonts, spacing, page breaks and the layout of tables are not, and neither are headers, footers, footnotes, comments, text boxes or images of a Word file. A change from one formatting to another with the same words is therefore not shown. The tool does not judge any change — whether it is acceptable, fair or enforceable is for you and, where it matters, your lawyer.

Limitations

• The redline is of the text, not the formatting or the layout of the documents.
• Paragraph matching is by wording: a paragraph rewritten so heavily that it shares few words with its original is shown as one paragraph removed and another added.
• Each version can have up to two million characters. Very long documents with many changes take a few seconds to compare on a phone.
• PDF downloads are set in Times, or in Noto Sans for letters Times lacks (such as ₹), which load from this site the first time; text in other scripts is better kept in the Word or HTML file.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot. Loads the Word and PDF readers and the PDF and Word engines from this site the first time they are needed. Both versions are read on this device and never uploaded.