Compare two lists
Paste or upload two lists to see what's only in list A, only in list B, and in both. It's free, needs no signup, and runs in your browser, so your lists are never uploaded.
Example loaded: Instagram followers vs. accounts you follow. Paste over it or
Checking Instagram? See who doesn't follow you back using your Instagram data export. Need to convert a file first? JSON to CSV, Excel to CSV, XML to CSV or all converters.
How to compare two lists
- 1
Paste or upload both lists
Put one item per line. Paste a column from a spreadsheet, or upload a .txt or .csv file for each side.
- 2
Choose how items match
Capital letters are ignored and spaces at the ends of lines are trimmed, unless you switch either off. Remove duplicates counts each item once.
- 3
Read the three columns
Press Compare. Each item lands in only list A, only list B, or in both, with a count for each column.
What else it does
Edit the results
Fix a typo, delete an item, or add an item to the other list from the results. Undo reverses the last change.
Spot repeated lines
Each list shows how many lines repeat. One click deletes the extra copies and keeps the first.
Clean pasted data
Strip @ signs, profile links and trailing commas, or run find and replace on either list before you compare.
Copy as CSV
Copy one column, or all three as CSV, and paste them into Excel or Google Sheets.
Common Use Cases
Social Media Audits
Compare follower and following lists to find accounts that don't follow you back, or mutual follows. For Instagram, the dedicated tool reads the files in Instagram's own data export.
CRM & Email List Cleanup
Check your CRM contacts against your email platform's subscribers to find people missing from one side, and repeated entries in either.
Inventory Reconciliation
Compare SKUs from your warehouse system with the SKUs listed in your store to find items listed online but not stocked, or stocked but not listed.
Data Migration Checks
After moving records between systems, compare the IDs from the source and the destination. Anything in only one column didn't make it across.
Questions
How do I compare two lists?
Paste the first list into the left box and the second into the right box, one item per line, then press Compare. Every item lands in one of three columns: only in the first list, only in the second list, or in both.
How do I find the items that are in both lists?
Read the In both column. It holds every item that appears in list A and in list B, the overlap between the two lists. Press Copy on that column to get the matches on their own.
Does capitalization or extra spacing matter?
Not by default. Ignore case is on, so "Apple" matches "apple", and Trim spaces removes spaces at the start and end of each line. Switch either one off when you need an exact match.
What file formats can I upload?
Plain text (.txt) and CSV (.csv) files, one item per line. To compare data that's in JSON, XML, Excel or YAML, convert it to CSV first with one of the free converters on this site.
Is my data uploaded anywhere?
No. The comparison runs in your browser. Your lists are not sent to a server or stored, and closing the tab clears them.
Can I compare long lists?
Yes. Lists with thousands of lines compare in the browser. Each results column shows its first 500 rows; Copy and Copy all as CSV include every row.
Do I need an account?
No. The tool is free, with no signup and no usage limit.
Comparing list A and list B
Comparing two lists means sorting every item into three groups: the items in both lists (the intersection), the items only in list A, and the items only in list B. The last two together are the difference between the lists, sometimes called a list diff.
"john@email.com" and "John@Email.com " are the same address, but a capital letter and a trailing space make them look different. That's why matching ignores case and trims spaces unless you turn those options off. Repeated lines are counted in each list's header, so you can see them before you compare.
In a spreadsheet the same job takes a COUNTIF or VLOOKUP formula per column; the Excel guide shows both. Here you paste the two columns and press Compare. For more on reading the results, see finding the differences between two lists and removing duplicates from a list.