diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 4e70bb11..144c5fb4 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -166,11 +166,13 @@ Certain options can be provided in the `options` object of *any* method that cal
 * `callback`: if provided, the diff will be computed in async mode to avoid blocking the event loop while the diff is calculated. The value of the `callback` option should be a function and will be passed the result of the diff as its second argument. The first argument will always be undefined. Only works with functions that return change objects, like `diffLines`, not those that return patches, like `structuredPatch` or `createPatch`.
 
   (Note that if the ONLY option you want to provide is a callback, you can pass the callback function directly as the `options` parameter instead of passing an object with a `callback` property.)
-* `maxEditLength`: a number specifying the maximum edit distance to consider between the old and new texts. If the edit distance is higher than this, jsdiff will return `undefined` instead of a diff. You can use this to limit the computational cost of diffing large, very different texts by giving up early if the cost will be huge. Works for functions that return change objects and also for `structuredPatch`, but not other patch-generation functions.
-* `oneChangePerToken`: if `true`, the array of change objects returned will contain one change object per token (e.g. one per line if calling `diffLines`), instead of runs of consecutive tokens that are all added / all removed / all conserved being combined into a single change object.
+
+* `maxEditLength`: a number specifying the maximum edit distance to consider between the old and new texts. You can use this to limit the computational cost of diffing large, very different texts by giving up early if the cost will be huge. This option can be passed either to diffing functions (`diffLines`, `diffChars`, etc) or to patch-creation function (`structuredPatch`, `createPatch`, etc), all of which will indicate that the max edit length was reached by returning `undefined` instead of whatever they'd normally return.
 
 * `timeout`: a number of milliseconds after which the diffing algorithm will abort and return `undefined`. Supported by the same functions as `maxEditLength`.
 
+* `oneChangePerToken`: if `true`, the array of change objects returned will contain one change object per token (e.g. one per line if calling `diffLines`), instead of runs of consecutive tokens that are all added / all removed / all conserved being combined into a single change object.
+
 ### Defining custom diffing behaviors
 
 If you need behavior a little different to what any of the text diffing functions above offer, you can roll your own by customizing both the tokenization behavior used and the notion of equality used to determine if two tokens are equal.
diff --git a/release-notes.md b/release-notes.md
index 3d932988..dc81a712 100644
--- a/release-notes.md
+++ b/release-notes.md
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@
 - [#464](https://github.com/kpdecker/jsdiff/pull/464) Specifying `{maxEditLength: 0}` now sets a max edit length of 0 instead of no maximum.
 - [#460](https://github.com/kpdecker/jsdiff/pull/460) Added `oneChangePerToken` option.
 - [#467](https://github.com/kpdecker/jsdiff/pull/467) When passing a `comparator(left, right)` to `diffArrays`, values from the old array will now consistently be passed as the first argument (`left`) and values from the new array as the second argument (`right`). Previously this was almost (but not quite) always the other way round.
+- [#480](https://github.com/kpdecker/jsdiff/pull/480) Passing `maxEditLength` to `createPatch` & `createTwoFilesPatch` now works properly (i.e. returns undefined if the max edit distance is exceeded; previous behavior was to crash with a `TypeError` if the edit distance was exceeded).
 
 ## Development
 
diff --git a/src/patch/create.js b/src/patch/create.js
index dfb4a237..96a5cc27 100644
--- a/src/patch/create.js
+++ b/src/patch/create.js
@@ -140,7 +140,11 @@ export function formatPatch(diff) {
 }
 
 export function createTwoFilesPatch(oldFileName, newFileName, oldStr, newStr, oldHeader, newHeader, options) {
-  return formatPatch(structuredPatch(oldFileName, newFileName, oldStr, newStr, oldHeader, newHeader, options));
+  const patchObj = structuredPatch(oldFileName, newFileName, oldStr, newStr, oldHeader, newHeader, options);
+  if (!patchObj) {
+    return;
+  }
+  return formatPatch(patchObj);
 }
 
 export function createPatch(fileName, oldStr, newStr, oldHeader, newHeader, options) {
diff --git a/test/patch/create.js b/test/patch/create.js
index 4a0396b9..d0cfd065 100644
--- a/test/patch/create.js
+++ b/test/patch/create.js
@@ -633,6 +633,10 @@ describe('patch/create', function() {
       expect(diffResult).to.equal(expectedResult);
     });
 
+    it('should respect maxEditLength', function() {
+      expect(createPatch('test', 'line1\nline2\nline3\n', 'lineX\nlineY\nlineZ\nline42\n', 'header1', 'header2', {maxEditLength: 1})).to.be.undefined;
+    });
+
     describe('ignoreWhitespace', function() {
       it('ignoreWhitespace: false', function() {
         const expectedResult =