What Happens When You Upload a File
The request, not an archive
PDF, Word, and Excel comparison accept two files. Laravel validates the extension and a 10 MB maximum, then the controller reads each file from PHP’s temporary upload path. The application does not move that file into a user folder or a database.
PHP deletes an uploaded temporary file at the end of the request when it has not been moved. That is the retention behavior. It is not a separate “secure vault,” and server logs can still record technical metadata such as IP address, URL, and—on extraction or Excel failures—the exception message. The Privacy Policy is the place for that distinction.
Checks before a diff is built
Upload routes are limited to 10 requests per minute per IP. Forms require the CSRF token used by the rest of the site. After extraction, a file whose text exceeds about 3 MB is rejected instead of being diffed.
If extraction fails, the page shows a short message. The parser’s raw exception text is written to the application log, not into the diff, so a filesystem path from the parser does not become part of the result.
What you get back
The response is the diff for that submission. There is no account and no comparison history to reopen later. Keep the source files in your own system if you need them again.
Paste tools never take this upload path. They accept up to 100,000 characters per field and are limited to 30 requests per minute per IP.