FREE WEB TOOL

List difference tool

Extract lines unique to list A or list B.

Use tool

How to use it

Compare two one-item-per-line lists and extract what exists only in A and what exists only in B. It is useful for checking member lists, IDs or before/after inventories.

  1. Paste one item per line into List A and List B.
  2. Select Extract.
  3. Review the “Only in A” and “Only in B” sections.
Comparison
Line by line
Outer whitespace
Trimmed before comparison
Blank lines
Ignored
Duplicates
Collapsed within each list

A has apple / banana and B has banana / orange

The A-only result is apple, and the B-only result is orange. banana appears in both lists, so it is not a difference.

Comparison is case-sensitive: ABC and abc are different items.

It calculates both directions

Instead of showing only A minus B, the tool also shows B minus A. For before/after data, that makes removals and additions visible in one run.

Leading and trailing whitespace is trimmed

Each line is trimmed before comparison, so an accidental space at the beginning or end of a copied line does not create a false difference by itself.

Repeated lines count once

If the same value appears several times in one list, it is still treated as one item for the difference check. Use a frequency/counting tool if the number of occurrences matters.

Order does not matter

The same item is considered common even when it appears at different positions in A and B. Use a sequence-oriented comparison if ordering itself is significant.