Beyond Compare Manufacturing Reviews & Insights

Score10 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.

Beyond Compare Reviews

5 Reviews

ManufacturingMechanical Or Industrial Engineering2Pharmaceuticals1Semiconductors1Luxury Goods & Jewelry1

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 (Luxury Goods & Jewelry company, 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 (Mechanical Or Industrial Engineering, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

22 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 (Pharmaceuticals company, 5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Comparing files and folders at its best

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

January 12, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using BeyondCompare in the software development organization for file comparison. Often we have to compare files quickly and easily. These files can be not only source code, but other kinds of files, like xml, xsl, xls, even binaries. We have tools that process binary files required by the business and sometimes we need to compare them to debug some production issues.

Pros

Finds and shows the differences between files quickly and accurately
Allows you to update either file(merge) when the difference is found, just by clicking on the arrows
Folder comparison is one of the most useful features for software developers
The integration with the mouse right click menu is extremely helpful

Cons

The User Interface could use a big uplift. It is old looking, people will prefer something more modern.
A little slow when comparing folders that have many files or large file sizes
Sometimes when the differences between files are caused by moving text, it is difficult for the tool to identify that, and it is a pain for the user to merge the files.
As in most comparison tools, the alignment can cause some issues, by showing too many differences between files which are caused by the alignment.

Likelihood to Recommend

BeyondCompare is the best file comparison tool we have used in our experience. It can compare any text format and even binaries. The folder comparison is a huge feature that helps a lot the software developers to debug/find issues in the code. BeyondCompare has proved to be much better also than the in-built file comparison from the file versioning tools we have used: VSS, SVN, SourceTree(Git).

Cristian Bodnarasec

Senior Software Development Manager in Information Technology at eSilicon (Semiconductors, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

View profile

BeyondCompare is Beyond Compare

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

November 28, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In our department of web coders, data entry and graphic design, we use it for everything from comparing code to massive spreadsheets. We can compare almost any file types and entire folders of files. We we receive documents from multiple sources we can easily combine them using BeyondCompare saving us countless hours or going line by line. The highlighted areas of the display make is simple to see where the differences are and move directly to them.

Pros

Being able to switch between seeing the entire document to just seeing the differences is very helpful when dealing with large amounts of copy. The ability to set the grammatical elements to compare also saves time and effort.
Sessions are great and can be sued to save and reuse an important compare you've done and retain the settings and rules you applied.
Accessing documents from the right-click menu is invaluable, quick launch of the program with your files loaded and ready to compare.
BC has a large number of file formats you can compare and the ability to change document formats or create your own is a plus.

Cons

Every once in a while there are serious alignment issues in BeyondCompare and it is hard to see exactly where everything lines up but you can choose the "align to" to compare important differences as blocks of added and deleted text rather than changed text.
It is difficult to select and or move blocks of copy when BC breaks them up into sections that are not the same on both the right and left sides. You usually have to manually select the row or rows you want to move.
Sometimes when a file is changed outside of Beyond Compare it does not update or recognize it and overwrites or eliminates any changes made. This may be a PC memory issue but I am not sure as it does happen occasionally.

Likelihood to Recommend

it is perfect for comparing programming and development code. It handles many types of these files, .html, .php, .js, etc. You can even compare two InDesign files for differences. We deal with large amounts of XML data and BC easily helps us look at them and combine their contents eliminating any duplications.

Ralph Vanore

Graphics Designer & Web Developer in Information Technology at HYTORC Division UNEX Corporation (Mechanical or Industrial Engineering, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

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BeyondCompare is Beyond Compare

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

November 28, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Being able to switch between seeing the entire document to just seeing the differences is very helpful when dealing with large amounts of copy. The ability to set the grammatical elements to compare also saves time and effort.
Sessions are great and can be sued to save and reuse an important compare you've done and retain the settings and rules you applied.
Accessing documents from the right-click menu is invaluable, quick launch of the program with your files loaded and ready to compare.
BC has a large number of file formats you can compare and the ability to change document formats or create your own is a plus.

Cons

Every once in a while there are serious alignment issues in BeyondCompare and it is hard to see exactly where everything lines up but you can choose the "align to" to compare important differences as blocks of added and deleted text rather than changed text.
It is difficult to select and or move blocks of copy when BC breaks them up into sections that are not the same on both the right and left sides. You usually have to manually select the row or rows you want to move.
Sometimes when a file is changed outside of Beyond Compare it does not update or recognize it and overwrites or eliminates any changes made. This may be a PC memory issue but I am not sure as it does happen occasionally.

Likelihood to Recommend

Ralph Vanore

Graphics Designer & Web Developer in Information Technology at HYTORC Division UNEX Corporation (Mechanical or Industrial Engineering, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

View profile