Free screenwriting tool
Compare Screenplay Drafts Free
Drop an old draft and a new one and see what actually changed, scene by scene. Each scene is marked unchanged, changed, moved, added or cut, with its page in both drafts, and any changed scene opens to show the exact lines that went in or came out. Final Draft and Scriptation charge for this. Here it is free.
Written and reviewed by ScriptLix Editorial
Add both drafts. Each file is read once and never stored.
How to use it
- 1
Add the old draft on the left (on a phone, the top box) and the new draft on the right. PDF, Final Draft, Fountain, Word and text all work, and the two can be different formats.
- 2
The summary shows pages, scenes added, cut and changed, words in and out, and speaking roles that appeared or disappeared.
- 3
Tap a changed scene to see its lines. Download the CSV for a notes meeting, or copy the change list into an email.
How does it know which scene is which?
Scene numbers shift every time you add or cut a scene, so it does not match on numbers. It matches on the scene heading plus how much of the text the two scenes share. A scene you moved from page 12 to page 40 still shows as the same scene, marked moved. A scene whose heading you changed from INT. KITCHEN to INT. DINER KITCHEN still matches if the words inside mostly stayed.
If you rewrote a scene from the ground up and changed its location too, it will show as one scene cut and a new one added. That is usually the honest reading of what happened.
When is a draft compare worth running?
Before you send a revision to a producer or manager who read the last one. They will ask what changed, and a list of scenes with page numbers is a better answer than “a lot”.
After notes. Check that every note you agreed to address landed in a scene, and that nothing you meant to keep got cut by accident.
Questions writers ask
Which files can I compare?
PDF, Final Draft (.fdx), Fountain, Word (.docx) and plain text. The two drafts can be different file types, for example an old PDF against a new Final Draft file.
Is my script stored?
No. Each file is read once to pull out its lines and is not kept. The comparison runs in your browser.
Can I compare a PDF against a Final Draft file?
Yes. Both are turned into the same scene and line list first, so the formats do not have to match. Page numbers come from each file, so a PDF page and an FDX page can land a little differently.
Why does a line show as removed and added when I only fixed a typo?
The line diff compares whole lines. Any change inside a line, even one word, shows as the old line out and the new line in, side by side, so you can spot the edit.