5 Turnitin Alternatives For Students & Researchers (Tested & Reviewed)

Turnitin plagiarism checker is trusted by over 16,000 institutions across 185 countries. However, it doesn’t sell to individuals. So, if your university lacks a subscription, you’ve graduated, or you’re an independent researcher who can’t justify iThenticate’s $125-per-manuscript fee, you’re locked out.

The access gap is only part of the problem. Since Turnitin launched its AI writing detector in 2023, false accusation cases have pushed universities like Vanderbilt, Northwestern, and the University of Waterloo to disable the feature entirely. Students who’ve never used AI tools now want to pre-screen their work before submission, hence look for Turnitin alternatives. And Turnitin still won’t help you fix grammar, flag missing citations, or improve your writing for journal submission, it detects problems but doesn’t help you solve them.

In this guide, we explore five Turnitin alternatives that offer comparable plagiarism detection alongside the writing support, individual access, and transparent pricing that Turnitin lacks.

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.

Top Turnitin Alternatives for Plagiarism & AI Detection: Quick Comparison

Feature	Paperpal	Grammarly	Scribbr	Copyleaks	Originality.ai
Plagiarism Check	✅ Yes	✅ Yes	✅ Yes	✅ Yes (100+ languages)	✅ Yes
AI Detection	✅ Yes (99% accuracy, trained on ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini)	✅ Yes (premium only; ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini)	✅ Yes (free; ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot)	✅ Yes (99% claimed accuracy, 30+ languages)	✅ Yes (99% claimed accuracy, GPT-4, Claude, Gemini)
Free Plagiarism Check Limit	7,000 words/month	❌ No free plagiarism check	❌ No free plagiarism check	~2,500 words (10 free credits)	Limited free scans (300 words/scan)
Free AI Detection Limit	5 daily scans, up to 1,200 words each	❌ No free AI detection (premium only)	Unlimited scans, up to 1,200 words each	~2,500 words (10 free credits)	3 free scans/day, 300-word limit each
Data Privacy & Security	ISO 27001 certified; zero data retention for AI detection; never uses data to train AI	SOC 2 Type II certified; data encrypted	GDPR compliant; EU-hosted servers; documents purged after processing	SOC 2 & SOC 3 certified; military-grade encryption	Content not stored after scan; privacy-focused
Paid Pricing	From $25/month (AI Writing, Plagiarism and AI Detection combined)	From $30/month (AI Writing, Plagiarism and AI Detection combined)	$19.95–$39.95 per document (pay-per-use)	From $13.99/month (AI Detection + Plagiarism combined)	From $14.95/month
Best For	Researchers & students seeking plagiarism + AI detection + writing improvement in one tool	Writers who want grammar, plagiarism & AI checks in one ecosystem	Students needing one-time checks for theses/dissertations	Multilingual content and code plagiarism detection	Content marketers, publishers & SEO agencies

Paperpal

Paperpal is an all-in-one AI research and academic writing assistant trusted by over 4 million academics. Beyond AI research and writing assistance for academics, here’s what Paperpal offers for students and researchers looking for accurate plagiarism checks and AI detection.

Paperpal Plagiarism Checker

Paperpal’s Plagiarism Checker scans your text against 100 billion web pages and 200 million open-access articles, delivering color-coded reports with similarity scores, side-by-side source comparisons, and match groupings that show exactly which sources overlap with your writing.

The free plan covers up to 7,000 words per month, and your data is never stored or used to train AI, making it one of the most generous and privacy-conscious options available for students and researchers.

Paperpal AI Detector

Paperpal’s AI Detector provides sentence level insights that identify AI written, Human-AI blend, and Human Written text AI-generated text across your document, helping you clearly identify which sections need major revisions before submission.

Available free for up to 1,200 words per scan, it works alongside Paperpal’s plagiarism checker and writing tools to give you a complete pre-submission integrity check.

Key Features of Paperpal

• Detailed, downloadable plagiarism reports: Get a similarity score with color-coded results and side-by-side source comparisons. The report flags missing citations, overlapping sources, and unmarked quotations, text that matches published sources but lacks proper quotation marks, even when cited
• Flexible word limits for every budget: Free accounts get 7,000 words/month (~25 pages) of plagiarism checking. Paperpal Prime subscribers get 10,000 words/month, with a pay-per-use option for up to 50,000 additional words — enough to cover full theses and dissertations
• AI detection built in: Paperpal’s free AI detector allows 5 daily scans (up to 1,200 words each), while Prime users get unlimited AI detection scans supporting up to 10,000 words per document
• 30+ pre-submission manuscript checks: Upload your manuscript and run it through language, technical compliance, and journal readiness checks to get a free standard report in minutes. Prime users can also download an AI-edited version of their document or opt for human editor review – a feature no other Turnitin alternative offers at this price point
• A complete academic writing toolkit: Beyond plagiarism checking, Paperpal provides free access to grammar and consistency checks, academic paraphrasing, a literature search tool powered by 250M+ research articles, citation generation in 10,000+ styles (APA, MLA, Chicago, IEEE, and more), AI PDF chat, and translation across 50+ languages
• Data security that addresses Turnitin’s biggest weakness: Paperpal is ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified and GDPR, FERPA, and PECR compliant. Your documents are never used to train AI models, a stark contrast to Turnitin’s practice of storing 1.9 billion student papers indefinitely in its database

Who can use Paperpal’s Plagiarism Checker & AI Detector?

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

This makes Paperpal the perfect Turnitin alternative for:

• Students struggling with undergraduate and graduate coursework who want to verify originality and ensure their work won’t be flagged by institutional AI detectors
• Educators who need trusted plagiarism and AI detection checks to speed up class evaluations
• Researchers looking for a quick but reliable AI writing toolkit that covers both originality verification and manuscript preparation, or
• Medical professionals who need precise scientific writing assistance with confidence that their work meets integrity standards.

Is Paperpal’s Plagiarism Checker & AI Detector 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 upto 7,000 words and AI detection for up to 1,200 words/scan, along with in-depth language checks, contextual AI writing assistance, and other key features.

Those who need additional support beyond the free plan, 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

• AI Content Detection: Grammarly’s AI Detector identifies text written or modified by major AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. It displays a percentage indicating how much of the text appears AI-generated and highlights specific sections flagged as machine-written. Grammarly also offers Authorship tracking, which categorizes your text by source — AI, online database, or original typing — so you can demonstrate how your writing evolved
• 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

Can you use Grammarly’s plagiarism checker & AI detector for free?

Grammarly’s plagiarism check and AI detection are not free Turnitin alternatives. Both features are locked behind premium plans. AI detection is available on Pro, Plus, Grammarly Business, and Grammarly for Education plans, integrated within Google Docs (via browser extension) and Microsoft Word (via desktop client).

Users can 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). Note that Grammarly’s AI detection is designed to help writers understand how their work might be perceived by other detectors. It’s optimized to minimize false positives but should not be used as a definitive assessment of AI authorship.

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 

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

• Free AI Detector: Scribbr offers unlimited free AI detection checks with a limit of up to 1,200 words per submission. The AI Detector distinguishes between human-written, AI-generated, and AI-refined content, and provides paragraph-level feedback highlighting specific sections suspected of being AI-produced. It detects content from ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.
• 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.
• Multilingual AI Detection: Scribbr’s AI Detector supports multiple languages, including English, German, French, and Spanish.
• Integrated AI Tools: Scribbr’s pay-per-use plagiarism check also includes access to an AI Proofreader for improving writing quality

Is Scribbr’s plagiarism checker & AI detector available for free?

Scribbr’s AI Detector is completely free to use with unlimited scans of up to 1,200 words per submission. However, the plagiarism checker operates on a pay-per-use model with no free tier. Plan prices range from $19.95 for documents under 7,500 words to $39.95 for larger works over 50,000 words.

For more extensive AI detection checks beyond the 1,200-word limit, Scribbr bundles AI detection with its paid plagiarism checker plans.

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: Copyleaks offers AI detection in 30+ languages and claims 99.12% accuracy. It uses AI Logic technology to scan for both AI content and plagiarism in a single unified report
• Code Plagiarism: Checks programming code for originality across major coding languages and flags modified or copied code

Is Copyleaks available for free?

Copyleaks offers a free trial with limited credits (approximately 10 credits upon sign-up, with 1 credit = 250 words) to test both AI detection and plagiarism checking features. For ongoing use, Copyleaks offers three paid plan tiers: AI Content Detector only ($7.99/month), Plagiarism Detector only ($8.99/month), or the combined AI & Plagiarism Detection plan ($13.99/month).

All plans operate on a credit-based system where credits reset monthly. Annual billing offers approximately 25% savings (e.g., $167.88/year for the combined plan). Enterprise and Education plans with LMS integration (Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, etc.) are available with custom pricing.

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
• AI Detection with 99% Claimed Accuracy: Originality.ai detects AI-generated text from GPT-4, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini models, with claimed 99% accuracy. It provides sentence-level AI probability score
• Fact-Checking Aid: Uniquely among Turnitin alternatives, Originality.ai includes a fact-checking tool that flags potentially inaccurate claims and provides context links, helping reduce AI hallucinations in content

Is Originality.ai free to use?

Originality.ai offers limited free access with a few free AI detection scans per day (300-word limit each) and a small number of free plagiarism scans to test the platform. Originality’s pricing plans start 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. AI Detector: Maintain your authentic voice and uphold academic integrity with our trusted AI detector. Paperpal’s AI Detector has been developed with 100,000+ human and AI text samples from ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini across domains, styles, and eras, which empowers it to offer deeper linguistic and contextual coverage than typical ChatGPT AI text detectors.
3. Seamless Literature Search and 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. If you need more assistance with finding the right sources to back your arguments, use AI Reference Finder to find relevant material from 250M+ research papers and explore more insights without losing context.
4. Intelligent Rewriting Assistance: For sentences flagged as too similar to published work, you can use Rewrite to rephrase content and personalize it with your insights to ensure your authentic voice while retaining your intended meaning.
5. 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.
6. AI Mentor Final Review: Receive expert-level feedback and recommendations to improve your writing from Paperpal’s virtual AI mentor before submission.

Frequently Asked Questions

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!