Beyond Compare

Score9.9 out of 10

50 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Beyond Compare are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Folder diffing feature: Users have found the folder diffing feature in Beyond Compare to be extremely helpful, allowing them to easily see differences in deeply nested folder structures. Several reviewers specifically mentioned this as a standout feature of the software.

Flexible diffing rules: The flexibility of the diffing rules in Beyond Compare has been praised by users. They appreciate being able to set rules to include or exclude files, folders, and lines from their comparisons. This customization option has received positive feedback from multiple reviewers.

Quick and accurate identification of differences: Reviewers have mentioned that one of the strong points of Beyond Compare is its ability to quickly and accurately identify differences between files. This efficient comparison process has been appreciated by several users who value time-saving features in the software.

Reviews

19 Reviews

Best file comparison tool

Rating: 8 out of 10

October 9, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Beyond Compare for daily use in order to quickly compare code files. Its one of the oldest and most mature tool available in the market. All of our engineering team rely on Beyond Compare when we need to have an overall comparison. The plus point of Beyond Compare is the support for Excel sheet comparison and binary file comparison.

Pros

Highlight specific lines, quickly copy/merge diff lines at a click of a button
Allows you to have diff/merge in the same window.
Compare large folders with multiple files, have a summary of differences.

Cons

Freeware is not available, we have to buy the license after 30 days.
Syntax highlight for well known programming languages should be provided i.e. Java, C#, C++
Sometimes slows down when working with huge files

Likelihood to Recommend

Best for programmers, engineers to quickly compare different versions of the code before merging to master.

Helpful to work with large variety of file extensions. (i.e. txt, binary, excel etc.)

Not really helpful for managers/senior team members who are most likely aiming to have a report or summary of the overall changes.

Bushra Mansoor

Senior Software Engineer in Information Technology at TPS Worldwide (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

View profile

An effective tool to compare and synchronize various parts of two files

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

May 18, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In my company, I develop software and sometimes I use BC to compare the source code of similar modules belonging to different software applications. So I can quickly evaluate the missing procedures in some applications and add or update them more quickly. Another use of BC is to evaluate similar XML record paths and find out which differences need to be corrected. BC is great for these types of problems. BC is fantastic because it can also compare the image differences!

Pros

Compare folders
Compare XML Files
Compare VB.NET / C# Files

Cons

The GUI is old style
Better integration with Visual Studio

Likelihood to Recommend

It's simple to use and focused on one job, but it does it effectively! In my opinion, it is suitable for system administrators who have to compare scripting files and folders, but also software developers.

Verified User

Technician in Information Technology (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Beyond Compare - Really good at all comparisons, file/folder/drives

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

February 27, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I've been a user of Beyond Compare (BC) for over 20 years. I use it nearly every day to compare files, folders, network drives. I search for a file and BC will ignore (when needed) folder structure making easy to locate misplaced files or documents. BC is a side to side viewer/comparer of names for anything on a drive. It is very visible, showing the same, orphans (left or right side), newer, missing, etc., all useful conditions. Information, location, duplicates, newest are among the many choices. Sessions are remembered. BC does such an excellent job, I've never had a need to reach for another "Beyond Compare" software. I know of nothing it does not do.

Pros

Compare: files, folders, drives, update or make changes
Solid operation

Cons

I have dual 32" 4k monitors. Add enlarge/use ctrl-scroll wheel to enlarge font view

Likelihood to Recommend

I'm pleased with Beyond Compare. I'v never had a need to look for an alternative. It has served me well over the years and continues to do so.

Reggie Freedman

President in Corporate at CPI of South Florida (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

22 years of experience

Beyond Compare

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

January 18, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As far as I know, Beyond Compare is used in the Engineering Department. It makes our life easier to compare multiple files or directories. And it is the best in the industry. It saves us a lot of time in the code review process and also in all the steps of the software development life cycle.

Pros

Compare files, directories.
Integration to the Visual Studio Source Explorer and Microchip MPLAB X IDE.

Cons

It could do a better job in comparing .CSV or Excel files.

Likelihood to Recommend

Beyond Compare not only helps to solve business/ work problems, but it's also helpful in day-to-day work by providing you a lot of tools. As an example, it could even compare images.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Beyond Compare - Easy to use for a quick check!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

November 7, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I utilize Beyond Compare for validation purposes - specifically our source systems’ data feed in comparison with the actual data stored within our data warehouse. This software offers a rudimentary solution for data comparison.

Pros

Ease of use - simply utilize standard folders to select each of the files to utilize for comparison.
Once files are selected the software does the work - cross checking equivalent rows between the two files
Highlights errors in red to easily troubleshoot discrepancies in the files

Cons

For date formatting discrepancies the software does not automatically mark the dates as equivalent; for instance ‘2019/10/15’ vs. ‘15-OCT-2019’. This would be considered a difference.
The columns/report must be ordered similarly. If extra data is available in one file, it should be removed or extra rows will be marked as differences.
For spreadsheet comparison, the user must save the file on the proper tab and then “recompare” within the tool. There is no way to switch between sheets in the software.

Likelihood to Recommend

For very rudimentary data validation or if files/data is expected to match 100% or close to that (such as regression testing), this tool is helpful.

Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

8 years of experience

Beyond Compare Review

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

October 4, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

This product is mainly used by a select number of people at my company, those that have a specific need to look at configurations for system setup. It is extremely useful for looking at any file type to determine what the differences are and quickly pinpoint lines that are not consistent. It is also used to validate registry settings between production systems.

Pros

It allows for scrolling through both documents at the same line level meaning you are not required to skip between files to look at what is different between the two.
A comparison between registry hives can easily pinpoint issues for hundreds and thousands of records.
Tabbing can allow for multiple compares to take place at the same time.

Cons

Some of the more advanced features of doing binary compare are a bit tedious to get right, but this is a very nitpicky problem to have.

Likelihood to Recommend

File compare between configurations of differing systems is where this program shines and can reduce what would normally take many minutes or hours to show exactly where the differences are located. It is especially nice if you don't centrally manage servers to identify registry settings remotely on two servers and not have to expand all the keys manually but go right to where the problem is located.

Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

Gets the job done

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

October 4, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it to compare files and make sure they match exactly in terms of content and format. This allows us to be confident when we make a process change or to determine what may have changed if we have issues.

Pros

Compares text files.
Compares folder structures.
Easy to use.

Cons

Can give false issues.

Likelihood to Recommend

Beyond Compare is well suited for comparing EDI or flat files.

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

15 years of experience

Beyond Compare is a must-have tool for your toolbox.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

October 3, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Beyond Compare for many tasks:

Deploy files to production.
General purpose FTP and SCP clients.
De-duplicate and merge files.
Compare source code trees.
Compare JPG and PNG images.

Pros

It's the best FTP and SCP file transfer client we found. It's fast, rock-solid, and has never let us down.
We can compare huge file trees quickly. The filtering (diffs, orphans, sort order) is extremely powerful. We can locate minor file differences quickly.
Rule-based comparison helps by eliminating minor differences in JPG image headers, text file line endings, MP3 metadata, etc.
The ability to install in portable mode is a key feature for IT support work.
Mac, PC, and Linux versions are available.
The native decoding of file metadata (MP3, image formats) is very powerful.
The tabbed interface allows multiple operations to run simultaneously.

Cons

I often need to exclude folders or files from the comparison. Currently, the fastest way is to right-click and then pick "exclude" from the context menu. Having the ability to multi-select folders and then exclude the group would be nice.
Sometimes we need to verify MD5 and SHA256 fingerprints, and this would be a nice enhancement within the tool.

Likelihood to Recommend

Any programming team needs a tool like this. I've tried many, many, file diff tools, and this is the best one I've ever used, hands-down. It has been continuously improved over the years, and now supports new standards like Amazon S3. Creative teams (photography, video editing) will also find this useful. Web developers who need to sync between development, test, and production will use this often.

Verified User

Executive in Information Technology (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

Merge Conflicts? Beyond Compare is the last tool you'll ever need.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

September 26, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Beyond Compare is used within our development teams to provide a robust comparison solution amongst text files as well as for use in recursively comparing directory structures on disk. Not only does Beyond Compare highlight differences between files, it also provides easy to understand merging capabilities, making it very simple to merge differing files into a single file.

Pros

Text File Comparisons - Beyond Compare provides multiple views into comparing files against each other, and can even do 3-way comparisons.
Text File Merging - Beyond Compare can help the user merge two differing files into a single cohesive file encompassing all changes. It also does a good job of highlighting merge conflicts before a user conducts a merge.
File structure comparison - Beyond Compare can compare two directory structures on disk and identify the differences in the file lists between them. This is incredibly handy for installer development.

Cons

Outdated user interface - Beyond Compare's interface looks relatively old - with low-res icons and text defaults that remind you it was probably written 15 years ago.
Beyond Compare integrates with version control systems on the command line, but I'd like the ability to invoke version control from within the GUI as well.
This is going to be a silly complaint - but I'm having a hard time coming up with any other "cons" for Beyond Compare - I've never liked its icon. Why is there a tire in it?

Likelihood to Recommend

Beyond Compare is extremely good at the task of comparisons, whether that is text file comparisons or folder comparisons. It does a great job of easily highlighting the differences for users, and giving them the option of merging (in the case of text files) or synchronizing (in the case of folders.) In either case, no one on my team has ever had any reason to reach for another different tool.

Verified User

Engineer in Research & Development (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Beyond Compare offers flexible data comparison for a variety of use cases

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

July 9, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Beyond Compare is a useful tool for operational tasks. We use it to compare various formats, include plain text, folders, and other structured data. It also works really great as a source code diff tool. Using it to compare eliminates manual work and reduces the risk of human error in long lists/data sets.

Pros

Compares more than just text files.
Extensive compare and merge functionality, eg. ability to adjust side-by-side lines.
Can save common comparisons for re-use or sharing.

Cons

No easy integration with IDEs.
No syntax highlighting or other useful editing tools.

Likelihood to Recommend

BeyondCompare is useful anytime two pieces of data need to be compared. It's a tool in my set that I use after some text manipulation or regex to find differences in log files, hard-to-spot changes in large XML files, or just comparing code snippets.

Anthony Aziz

Senior Software Engineer in Engineering at Full Circle TMS (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

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Merge Conflicts? Beyond Compare is the last tool you'll ever need.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

September 26, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Text File Comparisons - Beyond Compare provides multiple views into comparing files against each other, and can even do 3-way comparisons.
Text File Merging - Beyond Compare can help the user merge two differing files into a single cohesive file encompassing all changes. It also does a good job of highlighting merge conflicts before a user conducts a merge.
File structure comparison - Beyond Compare can compare two directory structures on disk and identify the differences in the file lists between them. This is incredibly handy for installer development.

Cons

Outdated user interface - Beyond Compare's interface looks relatively old - with low-res icons and text defaults that remind you it was probably written 15 years ago.
Beyond Compare integrates with version control systems on the command line, but I'd like the ability to invoke version control from within the GUI as well.
This is going to be a silly complaint - but I'm having a hard time coming up with any other "cons" for Beyond Compare - I've never liked its icon. Why is there a tire in it?

Likelihood to Recommend

Verified User

Engineer in Research & Development (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience