Feature List by Version
The Standard Edition of Beyond Compare includes all of the below features except for ones marked Pro.
Pro Edition has several additional advanced features tagged as 
in the chart below.
| Feature | BC5 | BC4 | BC3 | BC2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feature | BC5 | BC4 | BC3 | BC2 |
General Features | ||||
| Responsive, multithreaded interface | ||||
| Tabbed interface | ||||
| Integrated shell extension | ||||
| Save comparisons as sessions to easily load them later | ||||
| Automatically save sessions when closing them | ||||
| Save workspaces containing all open windows and sessions | ||||
| Home view with easy access to viewers and saved sessions | ||||
| View Unix patch files as a side-by-side comparison | ||||
| Standalone text editor | ||||
| Script processor for automating tasks | ||||
| Command line interface | ||||
| Supports high DPI (retina) displays | ||||
| Automatic check for updates | ||||
| Drag & drop to start comparisons | ||||
| Customizable fonts, colors, and keyboard shortcuts | ||||
| Extensive context-sensitive help | ||||
| Dedicated support staff available via email, phone, and forums | ||||
| Dark Mode | ||||
Apple CPU (M1/M2) Native  |
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Windows 11 Context Menu  |
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Compare Files | ||||
| Side-by-side display | ||||
| Color highlighting of differences within lines | ||||
| Display filters to show only differences | ||||
| Jump to next/previous difference within file or folder | ||||
| Printed and HTML comparison reports | ||||
| Unicode and MBCS support | ||||
| Thumbnail overview of comparison | ||||
| Can convert files before comparing them | ||||
| Compare files or clipboard contents | ||||
| Automatic backups when saving | ||||
Text Compare | ||||
| Inline editing with dynamic recomparison | ||||
| Syntax highlighting | ||||
| Ignore unimportant differences | ||||
| Comments | ||||
| Whitespace | ||||
| Delimited strings | ||||
| Regular expressions | ||||
| Character case | ||||
| Page headers | ||||
| Columns | ||||
| Line terminator style | ||||
| Manually Ignore selection | ||||
| Ignore replaced text and renamed identifiers |
||||
| Flexible alignment | ||||
| Aligns similar lines | ||||
| Multiple alignment styles | ||||
| Optionally suppress alignment of differences | ||||
| Manually align changes or break alignments | ||||
| Two- and three-way merge with output panel |
||||
| Merges changes automatically | ||||
| Marks conflicting sections | ||||
| Take whole difference sections or selections | ||||
| Find & replace | ||||
| Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, and Rich Text converted to text automatically | ||||
| Adaptive gutter buttons for copying sections | ||||
| Formatted HTML view | ||||
| View Delphi binary form files as text | ||||
| Line details as text, hex, or with character alignment | ||||
| Compare files with different formats | ||||
| Bookmarks | ||||
| Word Wrap | ||||
Table Compare | ||||
| Grid view | ||||
| Compare CSV, tab delimited, HTML tables, and Excel worksheets | ||||
| Ignore differences within numeric or date tolerances | ||||
| Ignore or hide unimportant columns | ||||
| Align based on key columns or all columns | ||||
| Rearrange columns to compare files in different orders | ||||
| Sort data before comparing | ||||
| Compare multiple Excel sheets and multiple HTML tables | ||||
Binary Compare | ||||
| Display binary files as hex | ||||
| Inline editing with dynamic recomparison | ||||
| Fast byte-by-byte alignment | ||||
| Limit display to differences | ||||
| Wrap lines to display | ||||
| Find & Replace | ||||
Registry Compare |
||||
| Local and remote registry hives | ||||
| Registry exports (.reg) | ||||
| Inline editing | ||||
| Recursively expand keys in-place | ||||
Picture Compare | ||||
| Many picture formats | ||||
| Flip, rotate, and scale images | ||||
| Multiple comparison types | ||||
| Thumbnail of pixels around the mouse cursor | ||||
| Ignore differences within an RGB tolerance | ||||
| Ignore replaced colors | ||||
| Zoom to show entire image automatically | ||||
Other Comparisons | ||||
| Compare .exe version information |
||||
| Compare MP3 tags | ||||
| Compare FLAC, MP4, ACC, OGG tags | ||||
| Can use third-party comparison utilities for unsupported files | ||||
Compare Folders | ||||
| Compare folders side-by-side | ||||
| Color highlighting of differences | ||||
| Automatically compare subfolders and expand them in place | ||||
| Display filters to show added, modified, or matching files and folders | ||||
| Flexible comparison criteria | ||||
| Last modified time | ||||
| Size | ||||
| Filename case | ||||
| DOS attributes | ||||
| File content (CRC32, byte-byte-byte, file format specific, or exe/dll versions) | ||||
| Ignore selection | ||||
| Exclusion filters | ||||
| File and folder names | ||||
| Sizes | ||||
| Last modified times | ||||
| File content | ||||
| DOS and Unix attributes | ||||
| Dedicated synchronization commands | ||||
| Powerful file operations | ||||
| Copy, Move, Delete, Rename, Change Attributes, Set Last Modified Time | ||||
| Multiple operations can run in the background | ||||
| Pause running operations | ||||
| Two- and three-way folder merge | ||||
| Merge to a separate output location or overwrite one of the inputs | ||||
| Automatically merge text files | ||||
| Ignore folder structure | ||||
| Printed and HTML comparison reports | ||||
| Link an HTML folder comparison report to individual file comparison reports | ||||
| Optionally follow symbolic links and NTFS junction points | ||||
| Align filenames with different extensions | ||||
| Align filenames using wildcard masks (e.g., "Apples*" => "Bananas*") |
||||
| Align filenames with different Unicode normalization forms (OS X vs Windows) | ||||
| Copy NTFS ACLs and DOS short (8.3) filename aliases |
||||
Virtual File System | ||||
| Local and network drives | ||||
| Remote SMB servers (\\server) | ||||
| FTP servers | ||||
| Named profiles | ||||
| Multiple simultaneous connections | ||||
| Resume interrupted transfers | ||||
| Secure FTP servers (FTP over SSL and SSH SFTP) | ||||
| Password, private key, keyboard interactive, or SSH agent authentication | ||||
| Cloud storage | ||||
| WebDAV | ||||
| Amazon S3 | ||||
| Dropbox | ||||
| OneDrive | ||||
| Remote Subversion repositories |
||||
| Portable media devices (Android phones, MP3 players, cameras) |
||||
Archive Files | ||||
| Compare and modify without extracting to a temporary location | ||||
| Compare as a file or expand as a folder | ||||
| Save filesystem snapshots without content | ||||
Version Control | ||||
| Launch comparisons from all major version control systems | ||||
| Checkin/checkout files via MSSCCI provider |
||||
| Compares Subversion repositories |
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