A system and a method for comparing Extensible Markup Language (XML) documents includes providing two XML documents as XML objects to a comparison tool and providing a list of XML items to be either included or excluded from the comparison. The comparison tool provides an application program interface (API), which allows it to be plugged into any application. The adaptability of the comparison tool to any application and the ability to exclude items from the comparison, or limit the comparison to specific items, provide for a flexible tool that improves performance for a user.