Top 5 Turnitin Alternatives for Students and Researchers

Are you a student looking to polish your essays before submission? Or a researcher wanting to ensure your work maintains the highest standards of academic integrity? While professors and journals trust the Turnitin plagiarism checker for plagiarism detection, it doesn’t offer individual plans. This means students and researchers often need to find good Turnitin alternatives to check their work for plagiarism before submissions. 

There are several plagiarism checkers like Turnitin that can help you verify the originality of your work before it reaches your professor’s desk. These tools not only identify potential instances of plagiarism but also highlight missed citations and provide editing assistance.  

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore five Turnitin alternatives that provide comparable features, from scanning your text against vast databases to offering detailed reports to improve your academic writing.  

Paperpal

Paperpal is an all-in-one AI academic writing assistant that goes beyond plagiarism detection to offer a comprehensive suite of checks for students and researchers. It’s a trusted plagiarism checker that scans text against an extensive database of 99 billion webpages, including 200 million Open Access research articles, and detects similar phrasing and synonym swapping in minutes.  

One of the best Turnitin alternatives, Paperpal has a 90% accuracy rate in similarity detection, outperforming competitors like QuillBot and Grammarly.  

Key Features of Paperpal’s Plagiarism Checker 

• Industry-leading Plagiarism Prevention Check: Evaluates your writing against billions of webpages and scores overall text similarity with published works, offering side-by-side comparisons and color-coded results.
• Detailed Plagiarism Report: Provides a downloadable plagiarism report that helps you avoid accidental or self-plagiarism by identifying missing citations, overlapping sources, and unmarked quotations (text that matches original sources but lacks proper quotation marks despite being cited).
• Flexible Word Limits: Paperpal allows plagiarism checks for up to 7,000 words with a free account and 10,000 words with a Paperpal Prime subscription. To analyze lengthy research papers, theses, and dissertations, Paperpal offers a pay-per-use option that allows users to analyze up to 50,000 words for an additional fee.
• Comprehensive Suite of Manuscript Checks: Unlike other free Turnitin alternatives, Paperpal has a reliable AI review feature and over 30 pre-submission manuscript checks. Users can upload and run their manuscripts through the language and technical checks and get a free standard report in minutes. Alternatively, they can download an AI-edited version of the document or choose a human editor review service for an additional fee.
• All-in-one Academic Writing Toolkit: In addition to free plagiarism checks, Paperpal also provides limited free access to its academic writing assistance, paraphrasing, literature search, citation generation, and AI PDF chat.

Who Should Use Paperpal Plagiarism Checker?  

Anyone and everyone can benefit from Paperpal’s plagiarism checker! A great free alternative to Turnitin, Paperpal delivers quick, reliable plagiarism detection for short academic works, including short essays, case studies, reports, abstracts, and presentations. Beyond plagiarism checks, you also gain access to an extensive research repository, with citation formatting, writing and paraphrasing, and language enhancement tools—absolutely free.  

This makes it the perfect solution for: 

• Students struggling with undergraduate and graduate coursework
• Educators who need trusted checks to speed up class evaluations
• Researchers looking for a quick but reliable AI writing toolkit, or
• Medical professionals who need precise scientific writing assistance.

Is Paperpal Plagiarism Checker Free to Use? 

The free version of Paperpal is a great starting point for students and researchers. Paperpal’s free plan gives you plagiarism checks for up to 7,000 words and allows you to benefit from in-depth language checks, contextual AI writing assistance, and other key features and checks.

Those with more complex writing needs or those who need additional support beyond what the free plan offers can opt for a Paperpal Prime subscription (from $25/month). This unlocks access to the complete feature suite, allowing academics to read research, write and cite, edit and refine, and prepare their work for submission all in one place.  

Grammarly

Grammarly’s plagiarism checker analyzes text and compares it to a database of 16 million webpages and academic papers from ProQuest. As an alternative to Turnitin for students, Grammarly not only detects plagiarism but also provides feedback on grammar, punctuation, spelling, and style with a single subscription. 

Key Features of Grammarly’s Plagiarism Checker 

• Passage Highlights: Grammarly identifies text in your writing that needs citations and indicates whether the content is likely generated by AI.
• Transparency in Sources: Grammarly Authorship automatically identifies the sources of your text (AI, online databases, your own writing, etc.), making it easy to build proof of original writing.
• Integrated AI Editing Assistance: This Turnitin alternative goes beyond plagiarism checks and corrects typos, grammatical errors, and punctuation mistakes.

Who Should Use Grammarly Plagiarism Checker? 

Professional writers, marketers, students, researchers, and business professionals can use it as an alternative to Turnitin plagiarism checker, as Grammarly caters to various writing use cases, including academia. However, compared to other tools like Paperpal, the Grammarly plagiarism checker is not as accurate or extensive.  

Can You Use Grammarly’s Plagiarism Checker for Free?  

Grammarly’s plagiarism check is not a free Turnitin alternative. While users who haven’t signed up can see a summary of the total errors detected in their text, a detailed plagiarism analysis is only accessible with a Grammarly Premium subscription. Users can upload documents or scan text of up to 100,000 characters (15,000 – 20,000 words) at a time for plagiarism checks with a Grammarly Premium plan (from $30/month).  

Scribbr

Scribbr plagiarism check is designed for individual users and has a pay-per-use model, which makes it a good Turnitin alternative for students and researchers. Scribbr performs better than many websites like Turnitin by providing a precise similarity percentage and highlighting similar text that corresponds to specific sources.   

Key Features of Scribbr’s Plagiarism Checker 

As a plagiarism checker like Turnitin, Scribbr provides the following features to help users avoid accidental and self-plagiarism 

• Side-by-Side Comparison: You can review your writing alongside the original sources directly within the plagiarism report.
• Self-Plagiarism Detection: By uploading previous assignments or unpublished work, Scribbr can identify instances of self-plagiarism that are often hard to spot.
• MS Word Integration with Automatic Corrections: When using Scribbr with Microsoft Word, spelling and grammar corrections are automatically applied using the Track Changes feature.
• Integrated AI Tools: Scribbr’s pay-per-use plagiarism check also includes an AI Detector and an AI Proofreader.

Who Should Use Scribbr Plagiarism Checker? 

Scribbr is a good pick for students and researchers seeking plagiarism checkers like Turnitin. It can help students finalise admissions essays, professors grade academic assignments, and researchers prepare manuscripts for journal submission. 

Is Scribbr’s Plagiarism Checker Available for Free? 

Scribbr does not provide a free version but offers a one-time payment structure for those who want to use its plagiarism checker. Plan prices range from $19.95 for documents under 7,500 words to $39.95 for larger works over 50,000 words. 

Copyleaks

Copyleaks is one of the most popular Turnitin alternatives for detecting improper paraphrasing, source code infringement, AI-generated text, and more. It scans your text against a vast database of 16,000+ open-access journals, 60 trillion websites and search engines, 1 million internal documents, and 20+ code data repositories to provide detailed analysis of plagiarized content.  

Key Features of Copyleaks Plagiarism Checker 

• Direct Plagiarism Check: Identifies exact matches between your text and the content in its vast database.
• Supports 100+ languages: Detects plagiarism in over 100 languages, including cross-language checks (e.g., scanning a Spanish document for matches in English sources)
• Paraphrasing Detection: Spots reworded or paraphrased content, even if the wording is altered significantly.
• Image-Based Plagiarism: Detects text copied from images or scanned documents.
• AI Content Detection: Identifies AI-generated text and explains why the text has been identified as AI-written.
• Code Plagiarism: Checks programming code for originality across major coding languages and flags modified or copied code.

Who Should Use Copyleaks Plagiarism Checker? 

Non-native English-speaking researchers and students looking for a plagiarism checker similar to Turnitin may prefer Copyleaks, which offers plagiarism detection across multiple languages with links to the original sources for transparency. Copyleaks also provides users source code plagiarism detection, which is beneficial for businesses and tech companies concerned with code originality.  

Is the Copyleaks Plagiarism Checker Available for Free? 

Copyleaks has a free trial that allows users to scan up to 2,500 words per month with 10 credits (1 credit = 250 words) and try out its AI content detection features after creating a free account. For longer documents that require AI detection and plagiarism checks, you can choose a Copyleaks paid subscription plan; costs range from $10 per month to $168 per year, depending on the specific features and usage volume you select. 

Originality.ai

Originality.ai’s comprehensive suite of features is tailored to ensure content authenticity and integrity for academic writing, making it one of the trusted Turnitin alternatives for researchers. Unlike many free Turnitin alternatives, Originality.ai goes beyond traditional plagiarism checks to detect global, paraphrase, patchwork, unintentional, and mosaic plagiarism. 

Key Features of Originality.ai’s Plagiarism Checker 

• Advanced Plagiarism Detection: Originality.ai detects subtle forms of plagiarism like improper paraphrasing and patchwork plagiarism.
• Flexible Content Input: Originality.ai allows users to upload documents, import content, paste text, or check content via webpage URLs for maximum convenience.
• Detailed Scan History: Maintains a history of previous scans, allowing users to track changes, compare results, and monitor the originality of evolving drafts.
• Multilingual Capabilities: Checks and compares non-English texts against multilingual sources and literature for global coverage.
• Shareable Plagiarism Reports: Generates detailed, shareable reports that highlight plagiarized passages and provide a plagiarism score.

Who Should Use Originality.ai? 

Originality.ai is a good Turnitin alternative for professors, researchers, and students to avoid accidental plagiarism and maintain academic integrity. Originality.ai’s Chrome Extension allows users to track the writing process to reduce the likelihood of false positives.  

Is Originality.ai Free to Use?  

Originality.ai plagiarism checks are available as a limited free access tool, such as three free AI detection scans per day with a 300-word limit each, and a small number of free plagiarism scans. For unlimited access to the plagiarism checker, Originality.ai offers a range of plans (from $30/month).  

Why is Paperpal the Best Turnitin Alternative for Students and Researchers?

Finalizing an academic manuscript includes ensuring originality and proper attribution. Most free Turnitin alternatives only flag matching text without providing solutions, leaving students and researchers struggling to manually address and fix each missing citation, rewrite any problematic passages, and separately verify technical accuracy. This fragmented approach can extend the manuscript finalization stage into a lengthy, multi-tool process. 

Unlike basic Turnitin alternatives that simply identify problems, Paperpal transforms your draft into a publication-ready manuscript with its end-to-end writing assistance: 

1. Comprehensive Plagiarism Detection: Paperpal thoroughly identifies all instances where your text may require attribution, source verification, and rewriting, going beyond simple text matching.
2. Seamless Citation Integration: When missing citations are detected, instantly cite references in your preferred format directly with Paperpal’s Citation Generator and automatically build your reference list.
3. Intelligent Rewriting Assistance: For sentences flagged as too similar to published work, you can use Paperpal’s Rewrite feature to rephrase content and ensure your authentic voice while retaining your intended meaning.
4. 360° Quality Check: Polish academic text faster by correcting complex grammar issues,  eliminating inconsistencies in tables, equations, and figure labels, and much more with Paperpal. Finally, verify your manuscript against 30+ language and technical journal submission checks to minimize the risk of desk rejections.
5. AI Mentor Final Review: Receive expert-level feedback and recommendations to improve your writing from Paperpal’s virtual AI mentor before submission.

Paperpal’s plagiarism checker and comprehensive AI writing toolkit empowers you to deliver your best, original writing, every time. Sign up for a FREE Paperpal account and get ready to go from first draft to submission ready in half the time.   

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$25 a month to access premium features, including consistency, plagiarism, and 30+ submission readiness checks to help you succeed. 

Experience the future of academic writing – Sign up to Paperpal and start writing for free!