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Development
Utilities
Windows
What are the best free 3-way merge tools for Windows?
13
Options
Considered
168
User
Recs.
Feb 3, 2024
Last
Updated
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10
Options
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Best free 3-way merge tools for Windows
Price
Platforms
License
76
KDiff3
Free
Windows, Linux, Mac
-
--
WinMerge
0
Windows
Free and Open Source
--
Vim
-
Linux, macOS, Windows, Cygwin
Vim License
--
P4Merge
-
Windows; Mac; Linux
Free
--
DiffMerge
-
-
-
See Full List
76
KDiff3
My Rec
ommendation
for
KDiff3
My Recommendation for
KDiff3
All
18
Pros
14
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Open source
See More
Top
Con
•••
Project doesn't appear to be being maintained.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
Top
Pro
•••
Allows manual alignments
For complicated merges, the automatic matching of any tool can get confused. A few manual corrections help a lot.
See More
Top
Con
•••
UI is ugly
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Manual editing without losing rest of merges
See More
Top
Con
•••
Cannot edit diffed files directly
Only the merge output can be edited.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Cross-platform
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Easy toggling of showing/ignoring whitespace changes
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Can compare directories
It is able to compare whole directory trees.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Supports 3 way merges
For modern version control systems, 3way merge support is a basic requirement, but many other open source diff viewers do not adequately handle 3way merges.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Free and open source
KDiff3 is completely free to download and use. It's also open source released under the GPL.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Keyboard shortcuts for most operations
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Context menu shortcut
You can right-click a folder/file and the options: Save <file> for later Compare with will be available, making launching KDiff3 really convenient.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Supports editing merged files directly
In addition to comparing two files it also allows you to edit the merge result right in place.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Preprocessing before calculating differences
There are options that may pre-process compared files before Kdiff3 actually do a comparison - to ignore for example automatically generated dates and/or revision numbers added by commit hooks.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Supports manual code aligning
With selecting code in one window and hitting Ctrl+Y, then selecting some other code in second window and also hitting Ctrl+Y you can manually align the code.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Diff by character not by lines
On comparing two files, difference is shown by characters; not by lines.
See More
Hide
See All
Free
Recommend
67
--
WinMerge
My Rec
ommendation
for
WinMerge
My Recommendation for
WinMerge
All
36
Pros
33
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Deep Windows support
Supports Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7/8/2012.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Windows only
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows
License:
Free and Open Source
Top
Pro
•••
Regular Expression based file filters allow excluding and including items
See More
Top
Con
•••
Development is spotty
The latest version (2.16.0) was released in November 2018. Before that the last official release was made in 2013. The 2.16.0 is actually one of the two forks (Winmerge-v2-jp) that were kept maintained throughout the years, it just got named as the official release. The other fork, WinMerge2011 is still being actively developed too. It's on par with the historical version, and has additional features such as showing only differences and a 64-bit version. An 'official' list of forks is maintained here.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Flexible editor with syntax highlighting, line numbers and word-wrap
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Good detection of moved lines
Detects when a block of lines has been moved in the file and shows the relation.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Open source
WinMerge is Open-Source-Software licensed unter the GNU General Public License.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Update added 3-way diffs/merge
Can now merge 3 files or folders.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Moved lines detection
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Location pane shows map of files compared
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Resolve conflict files
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Archive file support using 7-Zip
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Good navigation
Keyboard shortcuts (and toolbar buttons) to navigate to next (previous) difference, side panel shows a map of the files with changed lines and allows to jump to a given place.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
File edition
You can quickly copy changed lines (or files in folder comparison) in both directions with keyboard shortcuts. You can edit the files as well, with syntax highlighting of some languages.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Filters
Can filter out files for folder comparison, lines for file comparisons, with regular expressions. Options also allow to ignore whitespace differences, white lines, case change, line-ending changes, etc.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Compare folders and files
Can show what files has been changed in a folder, allows comparing files in tabs.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Good shell integration
Select two files and compare them. Alternatively, select one file, navigate elsewhere, select the other file to compare. Also supports drag'n'drop of files / folders from Explorer. History of past comparisons.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Free & Open source
Winmerge is a free and open source tool.
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Top
Pro
•••
Lightweight, quick startup
Binary is less than 3 MB, so it starts quickly.
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Top
Pro
•••
In line comparison
Can show differences within a line.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Supports comparing folders
WinMerge can compare both folders and files.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Shell integration
It supports 64-bit Windows versions.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Creates patch files
Supports Normal-, Context- and Unified formats.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Can show folder compare results in a tree-style view
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Compares one folder or includes all subfolders
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Fast compare using file sizes and dates
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Difference pane shows current difference in two vertical panes
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Highlights differences inside lines
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Visual differencing and merging of text files
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Tabbed interface
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Handles Windows, Unix and Mac text file formats
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Unicode support
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Localizable interface
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Plugin support
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Rudimentary Visual SourceSafe and Rational ClearCase integration
See More
Hide
See All
0
Recommend
28
8
--
Vim
My Rec
ommendation
for
Vim
My Recommendation for
Vim
All
32
Experiences
1
Pros
29
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Works in terminal over SSH
Unlike other editors such as Sublime Text, Vim is a command line editor and hence can be used in remote development environments like Chromebooks via SSH.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Difficult learning curve
You'll spend a lot of time learning all the commands and modes supported in Vim. You'll then spend more time tuning settings to your needs. Although once it's tuned to your needs, you can take your .vimrc to any machine you need and have the same experience across all your computers.
See More
ThriftyBathala's Experience
Vim has a learning curve, but after using it for 10 years you're more often disappointed when other/newer IDEs or text editors are missing a distinctive Insert Mode apart from a comparable Normal Mode in vim.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Linux, macOS, Windows, Cygwin
License:
Vim License
Price:
0
Extension language:
Vim
Top
Pro
•••
Lightweight and fast
When compared to modern graphical editors like Atom and Brackets (which have underlying HTML5 engines, browsers, Node, etc.), Vim uses a sliver of the system's memory and it loads instantly, all the while delivering the same features. Vim is also faster than Emacs.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Free and open-source software
Vim is open-source, GPL-compatible charityware.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Extremely portable
Vi/vim exists on almost all Unix-like platforms. It's the de-facto Unix editor and is easily installed on Windows. All you need to make it work is a text-based connection, so it works well for remote machines with slow connections, or when you're too lazy to set up a VNC/Remote Desktop connection.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Great productivity
Vim's keyset is mainly restricted to the alphanumeric keys and the escape key. This is an enduring relic of its teletype heritage, but has the effect of making most of Vim's functionality accessible without frequent awkward finger reaches.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Everything is mnemonic
No need to memorize different key combinations for things like deleting the text inside of a block or deleting the text inside of a pair of quotes. It's just a series of actions, or nouns and verbs, or however you prefer to think about it. If you want to delete, you select "d"; if you want it to happen inside something, you select "i"; and if you want the surrounding double-quotes, just select ". But if you were changing the text, or copying it, or anything else, you'd still use the same "i" and ". This makes it very easy to remember a large number of different extremely useful commands, without the effort it takes to remember all of the Emacs "magic incantations", for example.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Tons of plugins/add-ons
This makes Vim the definitive resource for every environment (Ruby/Rails, Python, C, etc.), or simply just provides more information in your view.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Keyboard-based, mouse-free interface, and trackpad support
There's no need to reach for the mouse or the Ctrl/Alt buttons again. Everything is a mere key press or two away with almost 200 functions specifically for text editing. Vim does support the mouse, but it's designed so you don't have to use it for greater efficiency. Versions of Vim, like gVim or MacVim, still allow you to use the mouse and familiar platform shortcuts. That can help ease the learning curve and you'll probably find you won't want to (or need to) use the mouse after a while.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Macros increase productivity
Many text editors have programmable macros, but since Vim is keyboard-based, your programmed macros are usually far more predictable and easier to understand.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Usable from a Terminal or with a GUI (GVim, MacVim)
If you happen to be logged into SSH, you can use Vim in a terminal. It can also run with a GUI too.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Excellent performance
As it loads the whole file into RAM, replacing all string occurrences in 100 MB+ files is quick and easy. Every other editor has sort of died during that. It is extremely fast even for cold start. Vim is light-weight and very compact. In terminal, it only uses a small amount of memory and anytime you invoke Vim, it's extremely fast. It's immediate, so much so you can't even notice any time lag.
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Top
Pro
•••
Once learned, it's very hard to forget
Vim's somewhat steep learning curve is more than made up for once you've mastered a few basic concepts and learned the tricks that allow you to program faster with fewer cut/paste mistakes.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Can never outgrow it
The fact that very few, if any, people claim to be a "Vim Master" is a testament to the breadth and depth of Vim. There is always something new to learn - a new, perhaps more efficient, way to use it. This prevents Vim from ever feeling stale. It's always fresh.
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Top
Pro
•••
Amazing extensibility
Vimscript provides a rich scripting functionality to build upon the core of Vim. When combined with things like Tim Pope's Pathogen plugin management system, it becomes easy to add support for syntax, debugging, build systems, git, and more.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Vimtutor
Vimtutor is an excellent interactive tutorial for people with no prior experience of Vim. It takes about 30 minutes to complete.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Productivity enhancing modal paradigm
As with all vi-like editors, Vim provides a modal paradigm for text editing and processing that provides a rich syntax and semantic model for composing succinct, powerful commands. While this requires some initial investment in learning how it works in order to take full advantage of its capabilities, it rewards the user well in the long run. This modal interface paradigm also lends itself surprisingly well to many other types of applications that can be controlled by vi-like keybindings, such as browsers, image viewers, media players, network clients (for email and other communication media), and window managers. Even shells (including zsh, tcsh, mksh, and bash, among others) come with vi-like keybinding features that can greatly enhance user comfort and efficiency when the user is familiar with the vi modal editing paradigm.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Built-in package management
Starting with Vim 8, a package manager has been built into Vim. The package manager helps keep track of installed plugins, their versions and also only loads the needed plugins on startup depending on the file type.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Asynchronous I/O support
Since Vim 8, Vim can exchange characters with background processes asynchronously. This avoids the problem of the text editor getting stuck when a plugin that had to communicate with a server was running. Now plugins can send and receive data from external scripts without forcing Vim to freeze.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Donations and support to Vim.org helps children in Uganda through ICCF Holland
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Works on Android
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Vim encourages discipline
If you use Vim long enough, it will rewire your brain to be more efficient.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Can set up keymapping
See More
Top
Pro
•••
By default in Linux
See More
Top
Pro
•••
If you can use Vim you can also use vi
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Flexible feature-set
Vim allows users to include many features found in IDEs and competing editors, but does not force them all on the user. This not only helps keep it lighter in weight than a lot of other options, but it also helps ensure that some unused features will not get in the way.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Has multiple distinct editing modes
Interaction with Vim is centered around several "modes", where purpose and keybindings differ in each. Insert mode is for entering text. This mode most resembles traditional text entry in most editors. Normal mode (the default) is entered by hitting ESC and converts all keybindings to center around movement within the file, search, pane selection, etc. Command mode is entered by hitting ":" in Normal mode and allows you to execute Vim commands and scripts similar in fashion to a shell. Visual mode is for selecting lines, blocks, and characters of code. Those are the major modes, and several more exist depending on what one defines as a "mode" in Vim.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Has been supported for a long time and will be supported for many years to come
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Useful undo features
Vim does not only offer unlimited undo levels, later releases support an undo tree. It eventually gives the editor VCS-like features. You can undo the current file to any point in the past, even if a change was already undone again. Another neat feature is persistent undo, which enables to undo changes after the file was closed and reopened again.
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Top
Pro
•••
Multiple clipboards
It is called "registers".
See More
Hide
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Get it
here
Recommend
10
1
--
P4Merge
My Rec
ommendation
for
P4Merge
My Recommendation for
P4Merge
All
13
Experiences
1
Pros
6
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
3 way merge support
P4Merge presents merge information in 4 panes - BASE, LOCAL, REMOTE and MERGE_RESULT.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Always tries to restore deleted lines
See More
HumorousNane's Experience
Freeze on big files, broke characters, no option for always remove deleted lines
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows; Mac; Linux
License:
Free
Top
Pro
•••
Auto-resolve most conflicts
When you open files to merge, you can see that most of the conflicts are already resolved. You need just check and resolve more complex conflicts.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Broken cyrilic characters
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Free
P4Merge is free of charge.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Freezes on large files
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Straightforward visual feedback
Great visual feedback about what's going on. This is really important for big projects.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Doesn't support merging of folders
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Color blind friendly
Uses purple and yellow instead of the usual red and green. It also uses different icon shapes, in case those colors are hard to differentiate too.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Directory comparison is not supported
With P4Merge it's impossible to compare two different directories to find differences.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Also has image diffing
For those who are working in both text based source code or files, as well as images, it's nice to have the diff functionality of both present in the same product.
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
12
1
--
DiffMerge
My Rec
ommendation
for
DiffMerge
My Recommendation for
DiffMerge
All
4
Pros
3
Cons
1
Top
Pro
•••
Allows editing during diff/merge
You can edit the files and diffs automatically update.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Visually fills up insertions in other panes with empty lines
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Shows differences within a line
If there are changes within a line, they will be highlighted on a per character basis.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Can compare whole directory trees
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
7
--
Sublimerge
My Rec
ommendation
for
Sublimerge
My Recommendation for
Sublimerge
Hide
Get it
here
Recommend
6
3
--
Intellij IDEA
My Rec
ommendation
for
Intellij IDEA
My Recommendation for
Intellij IDEA
All
8
Experiences
1
Pros
6
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Smart refactorings
IDEA places an emphasis in safe refactoring, offering a variety of features to make this possible for a variety of languages. These features include safe delete, type migration and replacing method code duplicates.
See More
SincereNinazu's Experience
community edition has an excellent, free 3-way merge
See More
Specs
License:
Apache 2.0
Top
Pro
•••
Stable and robust
IntelliJ IDEA hardly ever crashes or has any issues that plague other Java IDEs like file corruption or slowness.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Intuitive and slick UI
IDEA has a clean, intuitive interface with some customization available (such as the Darcula theme).
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Free version available
There is a free community edition (open source) and an ultimate edition, which you can compare here. The ultimate edition is available for free for one year for students but must be registered through an .edu e-mail account.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Fast and smart contextual assistance
Uses a fast indexing technique to provide contextual hints (auto-completion, available object members, import suggestions). On-the-fly code analysis to detect errors and propose refactorization.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Support for many languages
IntelliJ supports many languages besides Java, some of these are: golang, Scala, Clojure, Groovy, Bash, etc...
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
5
--
Meld
My Rec
ommendation
for
Meld
My Recommendation for
Meld
All
8
Experiences
2
Pros
4
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Fast on Linux
Relatively fast on Linux.
See More
Top
Con
•••
UI could be more intuitive
See More
EnergeticPirwa's Experience
Slow when processing huge line of code.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Linux; Windows; Mac (unofficial)
License:
Free and Open Source
Top
Pro
•••
Three way comparisons
You can compare up to three different files for differences. Plus you can edit files from the comparison view and the diff will automatically update.
See More
CulturedTashmetum's Experience
Popular, simple, modern, efficient.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Easy to use and visually appealing
Stragihtforward and you don't need to read tutorials to use it. Just click and select and you instantly see how the difference and merges are connected to eachother. 3 sub- windows, instead of 4, which reduces the mess during merge and let you see more of the surrounding files rather than just 5 lines.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Simple GUI
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
3
2
--
Sublime Merge
My Rec
ommendation
for
Sublime Merge
My Recommendation for
Sublime Merge
All
7
Pros
5
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Using the trial version forever without limitations
Sublime Merge may be downloaded and evaluated for free, however, a license must be purchased for continued use. There is no enforced time limit for the evaluation.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Not open source
The software is proprietary
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
Pricing:
FREE evaluation without time limit, $99 for personal license (including updates for 3 years), $75 per seat and year for business license, $168 for personal license bundle including Sublime Text (3 years of updates)
Features:
Line Staging, Syntax Highlighting, Image Diffs, Merge Tool, Git Flow Integration, Submodule Management, Themes, Custom Commands
Top
Pro
•••
Pure Git behind the scenes
All actions are real Git actions which minimizes confusion and makes it perfect for beginners and professionals alike.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
No account info needed
No account- or server checkbacks (only for updates). All password handling is pure Git which means much less trouble and confusion.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
"Native" performance (Python based)
Very good performance.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Very keyboard friendly
All actions have either direct hotkeys or corresponding entries in the palette (same as Sublime Text). This means a very streamlined and fast usage.
See More
Hide
See All
Free/$99
Recommend
2
--
SublimeMerge
My Rec
ommendation
for
SublimeMerge
My Recommendation for
SublimeMerge
All
2
Pros
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Fast, configurable, cross-platform
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Linux, Mac, Windows
Pricing:
$99 personal, $75/year business
Trial Period:
Unlimited
Hide
Freeware
Recommend
Don't see your favorite option? Add it.
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SmartSynchronize
My Rec
ommendation
for
SmartSynchronize
My Recommendation for
SmartSynchronize
$49
Recommend
2
--
AraxisMerge
My Rec
ommendation
for
AraxisMerge
My Recommendation for
AraxisMerge
Get it
here
Recommend
4
--
Beyond Compare
My Rec
ommendation
for
Beyond Compare
My Recommendation for
Beyond Compare
Get it
here
Recommend
7
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