When comparing WinMerge vs Sublime Merge, the Slant community recommends WinMerge for most people. In the question“What are the best free 3-way merge tools for Windows?” WinMerge is ranked 2nd while Sublime Merge is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose WinMerge is:
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.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
Pro Compare folders and files
Can show what files has been changed in a folder, allows comparing files in tabs.
Pro In line comparison
Can show differences within a line.
Pro Free & Open source
Winmerge is a free and open source tool.
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.
Pro Lightweight, quick startup
Binary is less than 3 MB, so it starts quickly
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.
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.
Pro Good detection of moved lines
Detects when a block of lines has been moved in the file and shows the relation.
Pro Pure Git behind the scenes
All actions are real Git actions which minimizes confusion and makes it perfect for beginners and professionals alike.
Pro Speed
Nothing is faster. I used to use Gitkraken, but on large projects Gitkraken is barely usable.
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.
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.
Pro Portable version
Windows portable version.
Pro "Native" performance (Python based)
Very good performance.
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.
Pro Lifetime testing
The product is paid but you can test for your life without paying (similar to sublime text).
Pro Excellent user interface
The user interface is designed excellently, and it's really fast to navigate with mouse or keyboard. It's never obscured which git commands are used, and commands can be modified/extended if desired. The visual appearance of the interface can be changed via themes, new git commands can be added, and even the menus can be extended.
Pro Not subscription based
A license gives you 3 years of updates, and you can use the product after that indefinitely.
Pro Bundled license available with Sublime Text (which is an amazing text editor)
Cons
Con Windows only
It's only available for Windows. No Mac or Linux versions available. It is possible to run in Linux via WINE, although a bit unstable.
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.
Con No 3-way merge
Cannot merge 3 files, can do only comparisons by pairs.
Makes it unsuitable for merging operations, still useful to compare two versions in the history.
Con Too expensive
And they're continuing to increase the price over the time, from the $60 that was at the start.
