How to compare a local Git branch with its remote branch

git diff <local branch> <remote>/<remote branch>

For example, git diff main origin/main, or git diff featureA origin/next

Of course to have said remote-tracking branch you need to git fetch first; and you need it to have up-to-date information about branches in the remote repository.

To update remote-tracking branches, you need to type git fetch first and then:

git diff <mainbranch_path> <remotebranch_path>

You can git branch -a to list all branches (local and remote) and then choose the branch name from the list (just remove remotes/ from the remote branch name.

Example: git diff main origin/main (where “main” is the local main branch and “origin/main” is a remote, namely the origin and main branch.)

First type

git branch -a

to get the list of available branches. On the output you may see something like

* master
  remotes/main/master
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/master
  remotes/origin/mt
  remotes/upstream/master
  remotes/upstream/mt

Then show the diff

git diff --stat --color remotes/main/master..origin/master
git diff remotes/main/master..origin/master