I would not use against with compare.

Danke für die Antwort. Die Variante mit "against" scheint sehr selten und wie man sieht in manchen Fällen sogar unakzeptabel zu sein.

Hier zwei der Beispiele, die ich gefunden habe:

If students are not compared against one another and their achievement is measured against fixed performance criteria, [...].

The tables [...] will show the results by module and by candidate, compared against regional and national data.

Lukas

Google offers lots of examples. But to my native ears, they all sound clumsy and "to" or "with" would be better in all.

In your examples: If students are not compared with one another

compared to regional...

This could simply be my own preference, we would need to hear from other natives to see.

Nothing is wrong with comparing something against something else. For example, comparing a copy against the original.

Regardless of questions of acceptability, to me, "compare a against b" puts much more emphasis on finding objective differences, whereas "compare with" may be more evaluative.

I agree with MikeE: "compare against" implies inspection/verification, like "check against" (as in the example in #4) which I would prefer. I would be wary of using "compare against" in general and wouldn't use it in the examples given in #2.

#4 is a good and valid response to #0 and #1. And, with genuine respect, nothing in #4 is contrary to anything said in #5 or #6--though I am not in complete agreement with either of them.