django-reversion-compare

What it is and what it does

django-reversion-compare extends django-reversion to display a visual diff when comparing two versions of a model. It provides both an admin interface enhancement (via CompareVersionAdmin) and a standalone class-based view for showing what changed between revisions. The package renders field-by-field comparisons with support for text diffs, foreign keys, and many-to-many relationships, and allows customization by overriding comparison methods per field or field type.

The package depends on django-reversion for underlying revision tracking, diff-match-patch for computing text diffs, rich for output formatting, and Django itself. It is actively maintained and compatible with recent Django and Python versions. The GPL-3.0-or-later license means it is suitable only for open-source projects or those willing to license their code under GPL.

Use it for:

• Display a detailed audit trail in Django admin showing exactly which fields changed between model revisions.
• Build a custom history page showing what was modified in a document or record over time.
• Compare two specific versions of a model to understand the sequence of edits.
• Customize diff rendering for domain-specific fields by overriding comparison methods.
• Add version comparison to third-party Django models without modifying their source code.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Adds a side-by-side version comparison view to Django admin for models tracked by django-reversion, showing field-by-field diffs between revisions.

Yes, if your project is open-source or GPL-compatible and you need to show model change history to users. The package is actively maintained, has low install friction, and solves a real problem for Django projects using django-reversion. Not suitable for proprietary applications without a commercial license agreement.

Install

django-reversion-compare on PyPI

pip install django-reversion-compare

uv add django-reversion-compare

poetry add django-reversion-compare

Installing django-reversion-compare

Before you install

Low friction install with four runtime dependencies. Active maintenance with last commit 2026-08-10. Requires Python >=3.12.

License in practice

GPL-3.0-or-later copyleft license. Using this package requires you to license derivative works under GPL-3.0 or a compatible open-source license; proprietary applications cannot use it without obtaining an alternative license.

Quickstart

pip install django-reversion-compare

# In settings.py INSTALLED_APPS:
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'reversion',
    'reversion_compare',
]

# In admin.py:
from reversion_compare.admin import CompareVersionAdmin
from django.contrib import admin

class MyModelAdmin(CompareVersionAdmin):
    pass

Requires django-reversion to be installed and configured first; django-reversion itself requires a database backend and Django admin setup.

Verify before relying

• Whether the package supports all field types in modern Django versions or has known gaps in comparison rendering.
• Performance characteristics when comparing models with large text fields or many-to-many relationships.
• Whether customization via method overrides works reliably across Django version upgrades.

Package facts

Evidence: django_reversion_compare-0.20.0-py3-none-any.whl

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