TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Beyond Compare

Score9.9 out of 10

50 Reviews and Ratings

Get a Demo

What is Beyond Compare?

Beyond Compare from Scooter Software headquartered in Madison is a utility for comparing different version of documents and seeing the differences. It also allows changes to be merged and synchronized.

Categories & Use Cases

Reviews

What users are saying about Beyond Compare.
View all reviews

Best file comparison tool

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

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

Most Important Features

  • Difference/Merge option on click of a button
  • Find/Replace option in comparison mode
  • Summary view of differences in case of folder comparison

Return on Investment

  • We haven't seen any negative impact

Alternatives Considered

Notepad++, Sublime Text and UltraEdit

Other Software Used

Slack, Zoom, Sublime Text, Visual Studio IDE, Notepad++, IntelliJ IDEA, TeamViewer, Skype, Google Meet, Postman

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

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

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

Return on Investment

  • Beyond Compare has been and is a great tool I would have difficulty being without without.

Other Software Used

Stock Explorer

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

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

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.

Return on Investment

  • Improved developer productivity both in development and operations.
  • Allow us to reduce risk of bad data causing production issues.

Usability

A comparison tool that's truly beyond compare

Incentivized
Richard DaviesView profile
Web Application Developer in Information Technology at City of Portland (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Pros

  • Compare two files or directories and easily see what's the same or different between the two sources.
  • Synchronize changes between two files or directories.
  • Be able to ignore insignificant differences such as code comments, minor timestamp differences, or certain file types, such as temporary files.

Cons

  • It could make it easier to compare more than two sources.

Return on Investment

  • It's made it quick and easy to compare and synchronize directories when restoring a backup or copying code from one environment to another one.
  • There are times when it would be a painstaking task to manually compare or sync two different directories, but BeyondCompare made it a trivial task.

Other Software Used

Redgate SQL Compare, Redgate SQL Data Compare, Eclipse

Usability

The best file and folder comparison tool. No doubt.

Incentivized
Hernán SilvaView profile
Senior Front-end developer in Engineering at Velocity Partners (201-500 employees employees)

Pros

  • Folder diffing. It allows you to see differences in deeply nested folder structures.
  • File diffing. It allows you to see differences in files no matter their complexity.
  • Diffing rules. It allows you to set rules to include/exclude files, folders and lines from your comparison.

Cons

  • Probably the only thing that might require improvement is syntax hightlighting on code files, the feature is in my opinion very basic and requires you to install or fine tune syntax hightlighting languages that usually lack precission in rules, attributes, names.

Return on Investment

  • The impact of BeyondCompare on my work is related to productivity, it can compare, merge and sync files and folders faster than other tools, default or third party, can.

Usability