What's a good (free) visual merge tool for Git? (on windows) [closed]

Question

I've also used Meld. It's written in python. There is an official installer for Windows that works well.

Install it and then set it as your default mergetool.

$ git config --global merge.tool "meld"
$ git config --global mergetool.meld.path "C:\Program Files (x86)\Meld\Meld.exe"

If using a GUI GIT client, try the following (instructions for SourceTree, adjust accordingly)

• In SourceTree, go to Tools/Options/Diff
• In External Diff Tool, choose Custom
• Enter C:\Program Files (x86)\Meld\meld.exe in Diff Command and $LOCAL $REMOTE in Arguments
• In Merge Tool, choose Custom
• Enter C:\Program Files (x86)\Meld\meld.exe in Diff Command and $LOCAL $MERGED $REMOTE in Arguments

On Windows, a good 3-way diff/merge tool remains kdiff3 (WinMerge, for now, is still 2-way based, pending WinMerge3)

See "How do you merge in GIT on Windows?" and this config.

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Update 7 years later (Aug. 2018): Artur Kędzior mentions in the comments:

If you guys happen to use Visual Studio (Community Edition is free), try the tool that is shipped with it: vsDiffMerge.exe. It's really awesome and easy to use.

I've been using P4Merge, it's free and cross platform.

I don't know a good free tool but winmerge is ok(ish). I've been using the beyond compare tools since 1999 and can't rate it enough - it costs about 50 USD and this investment has paid for it self in time savings more than I can possible imagine.

Sometimes tools should be paid for if they are very very good.

• TortoiseMerge (part of ToroiseSVN) is much better than kdiff3 (I use both and can compare);
• p4merge (from Perforce) works also very well;
• Diffuse isn't so bad;
• Diffmerge from SourceGear has only one flaw in handling UTF8-files without BOM, making in unusable for this case.

Another free option is jmeld: http://keeskuip.home.xs4all.nl/jmeld/

It's a java tool and could therefore be used on several platforms.

But (as Preet mentioned in his answer), free is not always the best option. The best diff/merge tool I ever came across is Araxis Merge. Standard edition is available for 99 EUR which is not that much.

They also provide a documentation for how to integrate Araxis with msysGit.

If you want to stick to a free tool, JMeld comes pretty close to Araxis.