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If you’re a student writing essays and need to check for plagiarism before submission, you want a free plagiarism checker that can scan your essay at least once before you hit submit—and bonus points if it includes extra features like AI detection, grammar checking, and language improvements to polish your work.
We’ve tested and reviewed the seven most popular plagiarism checkers to help you find the best option for scanning your essays.
Our evaluation focused on what matters most to students: how many words you can check per scan, whether you can use these tools completely free to check your essay at least once, how accurately they detect plagiarism in academic writing, and what additional features they offer beyond plagiarism detection, like grammar and vocabulary checks, citation generators, and writing suggestions that can help improve your essays.
Whether you’re looking for a one-time free scan or an all-in-one tool that can help you write faster and submit with confidence, this guide will help you choose the plagiarism checker that fits your needs as a student.
Disclaimer
This article is based on independent research and is intended to provide an unbiased comparison of various AI writing tools, including our own. While we strive to present accurate and up-to-date information, features, and pricing, we recommend checking directly with the respective companies for the latest details, as offerings may change over time. Additionally, any opinions expressed here reflect the author’s perspective and may not represent the official stance of the companies/tools discussed.
Plagiarism Checkers: Quick Comparison
| Features | Paperpal | Scribbr | Grammarly | Quetext | Copyleaks | Smodin | Plagscan |
| Checks against large academic + web databases | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Provides similarity score | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Color-coded plagiarism highlights | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Side-by-side source comparison | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Free plagiarism check available | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Supports document uploads (Word/PDF) | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Paperpal: Best for Essays – 7,000 Words Free Plagiarism Check
Paperpal’s Plagiarism Checker is integrated into the comprehensive all-in-one writing assistant. You can scan essays, research papers, theses or academic text against a database of 100 billion web pages.
Paperpal detects similar phrasing and instances of synonym swapping in text and provides a detailed plagiarism report to quickly identify problem areas in your writing. Here’s what you get with Paperpal’s plagiarism report:
- Overall Similarity Score – A percentage indicating how much of your text overlaps with existing sources (ideally should be under 15-20%)
- Color-coded results – Red, orange, yellow, and green indicators to quickly identify the severity of different matches
- Match Groups section – Detailed breakdowns that show:
- Specific instances of similarity in your text
- Which sources those similarities come from
- How many times each source appears in your document
- The ability to view overlapping sources (when one instance of similarity traces back to multiple sources)
- Side-by-side comparisons – Visual displays showing your text alongside the matching source content
- Sources tab – A comprehensive list of all sources where similarities were detected, with options to identify overlapping sources
Key Features
- Detailed plagiarism insights: Identify where your text matches existing published content, understand the nature and severity of those matches, and get exactly which sources are involved so you can take appropriate action, whether that’s adding citations, rewriting passages, or addressing unintentional plagiarism.
- Free report available: Free users can check up to 7,000 words/month (~25 pages). Paperpal Prime includes a more detailed report and allows up to 10,000 words/month (~36 pages), with options to buy additional words if needed.
- Multiple file formats: Upload your work files in .doc, .docx, and PDF formats and check your writing for potential plagiarism.
- Privacy-first data security: Your manuscript remains yours, Paperpal does not use your data to train its AI, and follows privacy-first safeguards to protect your work.
Pricing
Paperpal’s free plan allows users to scan up to 7,000 words per month, approximately 25 pages, through their plagiarism detection software, which then delivers a report with a similarity score and matching sources.
With the Paperpal Prime subscription, users can check up to 10,000 words per month, approximately 36 pages, and get an in-depth plagiarism report with color-coded results and side-by-side comparisons. Paid subscribers also have the option to purchase an additional 50,000 words at a special price.
Paperpal Prime is priced at $25/month, $55/quarter, and $139/year, respectively.
Paperpal Goes Beyond a Plagiarism Checker
Need that final polish before you hit submit? Get grammar and academic paraphrasing suggestions followed by an AI peer review. Verify technical aspects like ethical declarations, formatting, metadata, tables and figures with Paper Checker. Understand how AI influenced your work with accurate AI detection.
Scribbr: Best for Self Plagiarism Checks
Scribbr’s plagiarism checker has a limited free version that’s perfect for checking if your work has been plagiarized. To unlock the detailed report, you need to buy the premium version, which costs between $19.95 and $39.95 depending on the word count.
What we like about Scribbr’s plagiarism checker is it lets users upload their own previous or unpublished documents for customized comparison during scans. This helps detect reused content across personal works, unlike most plagiarism checkers that only check against public databases.
Pros:
- Detects paraphrased and self-plagiarism effectively with detailed reports.
- Fast scans under 10 minutes, saving time over manual checks
- Includes proofreading and citation tools for complete academic support
Cons:
- Slower than other plagiarism checkers on large documents
- Higher cost for detailed reports, starting around $20 per scan
- Occasional false positives on references or original work
- No simple copy-paste; requires file uploads only
Grammarly: Best for Class Assignments
Grammarly’s plagiarism checker works best for quick, integrated originality checks during everyday writing and editing tasks. It excels when combined with grammar and style suggestions for non-academic users. Grammarly’s plagiarism check is a premium-only feature which is available at $15/month.
Pros:
- Grammarly checks submitted text against ProQuest’s database of 16 billion webpages
- The plagiarism checker provides real-time feedback as users write for a smoother writing flow
- Let’s users to scan copy-pasted text and file uploads
- Grammarly plagiarism checker supports .doc, .docx, and PDF file formats
Cons:
- No free plagiarism checks provided
- Inaccurate detection of heavily edited text and AI content
- No color categorization of different sources, making it hard to interpret the report
- Limited academic database depth compared to Paperpal or Turnitin
- English-only support for plagiarism scans
Quetext: Best for Identifying Structural Plagiarism in Essays
Quetext leverages its proprietary DeepSearch technology to effectively identify plagiarism in various forms of writing. It assess key factors like word placement, sentence structure, and the overall flow of the content to identify potential plagiarism.
Key Features
- DeepSearch Technology: Quetext plagiarism checker, powered by DeepSearch, allows the AI tool to detect plagiarism by analyzing context, the use and position of words, and sentence structure instead of relying solely on exact phrase matches.
- Color-Graded Feedback: Quetext provides a score and uses a color-grading system to highlight potential plagiarism. For example, orange indicates partial matches, while red signifies full text matches.
- Citation Assistant: The built-in Cite Source tool helps users address flagged issues faster; it generates citations for matched sources with an option to directly insert these in text.
- Document Privacy: Quetext does not store or sell user documents, ensuring your work remains private and secure.
- Bulk Uploads: Users can upload multiple documents at once on Quetext, streamlining the plagiarism-checking process for larger projects.
Pricing
Quetext has a free trial that allows users to check up to 500 words for plagiarism. After the trial, users must subscribe to a premium plan starting at about $8.25 per month; this includes checks for up to 100,000 words and access to additional features such as the citation assistant and detailed reports.
| Pros | Cons |
| Effective for basic plagiarism detection | Not very accurate; partial matching can lead to false positives |
| User-friendly interface with color-coded feedback | Users complain about major formatting changes, difficulty in reading color-grading system which makes it hard to identify critical problem areas |
| Built-in citation assistant to help with missing citations available with paid plans | Limited effectiveness for academic sources |
| Does not store user documents uploaded on the plagiarism checker tool | Free version has significant limitations; monthly subscription required to unlock all features |
Who should use Quetext’s plagiarism checker?
Quetext works well for students and content creators looking to quickly identify and avoid plagiarism in their work. However, users have reported accuracy errors, particularly with partial matches and their performance when it comes to scholarly sources. Here, students looking for a comprehensive plagiarism checker will find Paperpal more effective to check academic text.
Copyleaks Plagiarism Checker Review
Copyleaks detects instances of plagiarism, including copied content, paraphrased text, and AI-generated material. On its website, the plagiarism detection software claims to achieve up to 99.12% accuracy in detecting AI-generated text with a false positive rate of just 0.2%. This minimizes the likelihood of human writing being incorrectly flagged as AI-generated text.
Key Features
- Advanced Real-Time Detection: Copyleaks can identify plagiarism as it happens, which is particularly useful for businesses and organizations wanting to protect their content from unauthorized use.
- Multiple Language Support: This tool supports over 100 languages, making it suitable for international clients and users creating content in various languages.
- Customizable Settings: Users can adjust the sensitivity of the plagiarism detection and exclude specific sources, allowing for a tailored scanning experience.
- API Integration: Copyleaks offers an API that enables organizations to integrate its plagiarism detection capabilities into their existing systems, such as learning management systems (LMS) like Blackboard and Canvas.
- Comprehensive Reporting: After scanning, Copyleaks provides detailed reports that highlight similarities, including percentage matches and links to original sources, facilitating easy revision and citation.
Pricing
Copyleaks offers separate plans for AI and Plagiarism detection, starting from $9.99/month and $10.99/month, respectively. The annual plan, priced at $167.88, offers both AI and plagiarism detection.
| Pros | Cons |
| Accurate plagiarism detection with customizable settings for tailored results | May require adjustments for optimal sensitivity settings |
| Supports multiple languages, making it perfect for non-native English speakers | Some users report issues with unsupported formats |
| API integration for seamless plagiarism checks within your writing workflows | Slow processing times for large documents and bulk uploads |
| Limited live support channels |
Who should use Copyleaks plagiarism checker?
Copyleaks can be a good plagiarism checker for students, educational institutions, legal and compliance professionals, and business and marketing professionals. With separate tools to detect plagiarism and AI-generated content, it helps you maintain originality in your writing.
Smodin Plagiarism Checker Review
Smodin is a solid choice for a basic plagiarism checker, especially for those on a budget. This plagiarism checker compares submitted text against a database of webpages and online sources and generates a report with the overall percentage of matching content. The report highlights specific phrases or sentences that match external sources.
Key Features
- Plagiarism Detection: Scans your text for similarities against millions of online sources and documents, with options for customized checks.
- Citations Assistance: Integrated with a feature that allows users to generate and add proper citations to avoid plagiarism and ensure authentic writing.
- AI Content Detection: Offers access to a tool that checks your text for AI-generated content and provides a percentage score so you can paraphrase as needed.
- Multi-Language Support: Checks documents in 100+ languages
- Mobile-Friendly Tool: Users can access Smodin’s features on any Android or iOS device apart from desktop or laptop.
Pricing
Smodin’s free plagiarism checker allows users to scan up to 1,500 characters. Paid plans, ranging from $15/month to $79/month, offers unlimited plagiarism checks, AI detection, rewrites, summaries, etc.
| Pros | Cons |
| Plagiarism detection with customizable checking options | Performs poorly with scholarly sources; more suited for generic text |
| Quick scanning against millions of webpages with immediate feedback | Scans individual sentences rather than full texts, which could be misleading |
| Allows access to AI content detection and citation support tools | Not very accurate; high occurrence of false positives for AI-generated text results |
| Provides plagiarism checks for 100+ languages | Limited word limit for every scan in free version; users need to choose paid plans for unlimited use |
Who should use Smodin plagiarism checker?
Smodin is an affordable plagiarism checker for students, content creators, businesses, and multilingual users looking for basic checks. However, due to its sentence-level scanning and limitations per scan, it might not be a viable option for researchers, medical professionals, and other academics who often scan large chunks of text and rely on high accuracy.
Plagscan Plagiarism Checker Review
Plagscan by Turnitin is a comprehensive plagiarism checker that employs a sophisticated two-step plagiarism-checking algorithm to detect similarities in uploaded content. This plagiarism prevention tool detects direct copying, paraphrasing, and matching sentence structures.
Key Features
- Multiple File Format Support: Users can upload their documents for plagiarism checks in various formats, including .doc, .docx, PDF, plain text, and more.
- Side-by-Side Text Comparison: Plagscan plagiarism report allows users to review their text alongside matched sources to quickly check similarities and flagged issues.
- Interactive Reports: Users can opt to download detailed plagiarism reports that highlight duplicated text, provide links to original sources, and include a similarity percentage or choose to collaborate with others on the interactive browser report.
- Focus on Data Security: Plagscan has access restrictions, which means that your work will never be shared without permission. You also retain full control over your documents and can choose when and if to delete them.
Pricing
Plagscan offers a variety of plagiarism detection packages. Users can choose one or a combination of plans with prepaid, pay-per-use prices ranging from $5.99 for 6,000 words to $49.99 for 100,000 words.
| Pros | Cons |
| High accuracy in plagiarism detection for any human-written text | Struggles with accurate plagiarism detection for AI-generated or paraphrased content |
| Multiple file format support | Extremely slow processing time |
| Quick review with categorized similarity sources and access to Plagiarism Prevention Pool to check your work against other user uploads | No additional paraphrasing or grammar checks to help address problem areas |
| Secure platform that keeps your work private and confidential | User data and documents are saved in the archive, unless you delete it/opt out |
Who can use Plagscan plagiarism checker?
Plagscan is an affordable plagiarism checker that allows students flexible options when it comes to checking their assignments, essays, and other texts. However, slow processing times can be a major issue when scanning large chunks of text for plagiarism.
How to Choose the Best Plagiarism Checker for Academic Writing?
Even accidental or self-plagiarism entails severe repercussions in the academic domain. Hence, a reliable plagiarism checker is a must-have part of any text-related workflow. When choosing the best plagiarism checker for academic writing, it’s crucial to ensure that a tool aligns with the needs of students, researchers, scientists, medical professionals, etc. Here’s a guide based on our experience to choose the best plagiarism checker for research:
- Comprehensive Content Repository: The best plagiarism checker should have a vast, diverse database of webpages, academic journals, books, and other scholarly sources. Plagiarism tools like Paperpal, which checks your work against a database of 99 billion webpages covering 97% of top publications, significantly reduces the risk of undetected plagiarism.
- Detection of Paraphrased and AI-Generated Text: A reliable plagiarism checker should be able to detect not just verbatim copying, but also subtler forms of plagiarism, including AI-generated content or paraphrased passages that lack proper attribution. This level of plagiarism detection ensures a thorough check for any form of misconduct and cheating.
- Clear Reporting: A good plagiarism checker should provide clear, detailed reports that highlight instances of potential plagiarism and specify sources where text matches were found. For instance, Paperpal provides easy-to-read plagiarism reports with a similarity score, color-coded results, side-by-side comparisons and suggestions to address potential red flags.
- Integrated Citation Assistance: The best plagiarism checkers will also have citation support. This helps in quickly addressing instances of potential plagiarism by attributing sources correctly and in the right style, which further helps maintain academic integrity.
- Integrated Writing and Editing Support: Plagiarism checkers like Paperpal also offer integrated writing and language editing assistance, along with in-built search and cite features, making it the best plagiarism checker and all-in-one academic writing tool.
While Paperpal stands out as the best plagiarism checker for academics, Scribbr and Grammarly are also highly regarded for their plagiarism detection capabilities and ease of use. Always consider your specific needs and budget to find the best fit for research and academic writing purposes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Using a plagiarism checker for research and academic writing is not only permissible but highly recommended. These tools help ensure the originality of your work, identify potential issues, and can also improve your writing skills. Integrating plagiarism checks into your writing process also helps users adhere to ethical writing practices, uphold academic integrity, and enhance the quality of your research.
The best plagiarism checker for research and academic writing largely depends on your specific needs:
1. To produce your best original academic content: Paperpal is the perfect choice; its deep domain expertise and comprehensive feature suite, including accurate plagiarism checks against Turnitin’s extensive database, makes it the best plagiarism checker for academics.
2. To avoid plagiarism issues in everyday writing: Grammarly and Quetext are great options for easy and quick plagiarism checks, especially for those looking for additional writing support.
3. To quickly check short text for plagiarism: Copyleaks or PlagScan may be more suitable for those looking for flexibility and processing text in batches as they write.
4. To ensure accurate, affordable plagiarism detection: Look for trusted tools that offer maximum free checks. Here, Paperpal is the best plagiarism checker, processing up to 7,000 words for free every month and providing a reliable report based on Turnitin’s plagiarism detection software.
Using a plagiarism checker ethically is crucial for maintaining academic integrity while respecting the rights of original authors. Here are some guidelines on how to use these tools responsibly:
1. Understand What Constitutes Plagiarism: Familiarize yourself with the different forms of plagiarism, including direct copying, paraphrasing without credit, and using others’ ideas without attribution. This understanding will help you recognize the importance of originality in your work and the role of plagiarism checkers in preventing academic dishonesty.
2. Review and Interpret Results Carefully: Plagiarism detection tools may produce false positives, flagging common phrases or well-known facts as potential plagiarism. Review results critically and determine whether the flagged content genuinely constitutes plagiarism or if it is simply a legitimate use of common knowledge/phrases.
3. Ensure Privacy and Confidentiality: Be mindful of the security and privacy measures when using plagiarism checkers, especially those that store or share your documents. Ensure that the tool you choose has a clear data policy and does not retain or use your work without your consent.
4. Cite All Sources Appropriately: Use plagiarism checkers to identify missing citations. If the tool highlights text that matches other sources, ensure that you provide proper attribution.
5. Follow Institutional/Journal Guidelines: Adhere to your institution’s or journal’s policies on plagiarism and the use of plagiarism detection tools to navigate ethical dilemmas effectively. Many academic institutions and publishers have specific guidelines regarding how to use these tools and the consequences of academic dishonesty.
6. Check Your Work Before Submission: Always run your writing, and its revised versions, through a plagiarism checker before submitting it. This step helps ensure that your work is original and that you have appropriately cited all sources.
Paperpal is a comprehensive AI writing toolkit that helps students and researchers achieve 2x the writing in half the time. It leverages 23+ years of STM experience and insights from millions of research articles to provide in-depth academic writing, language editing, and submission readiness support to help you write better, faster.
Get accurate academic translations, rewriting support, grammar checks, vocabulary suggestions, and generative AI assistance that delivers human precision at machine speed. Try for free or upgrade to Paperpal Prime starting at US$19 a month to access premium features, including consistency, plagiarism, and 30+ submission readiness checks to help you succeed.
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