Free plagiarism checker comparison

Free plagiarism checkers are popular. Many students, marketers and text writers use them to avoid plagiarism. We conducted research to answer two main questions:

1. Which plagiarism checkers are really free?
2. How much plagiarism is detected by each plagiarism checker?

Conclusion

• Almost all 100% free plagiarism checkers detect very little plagiarism.
• Plagiarism checkers that offer a free trial perform much better. However, you will probably end up paying for the service.

For comparison purposes, we added the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker, which is the best plagiarism checker as of 2019. It’s not free, but it does detect the most plagiarism of all plagiarism checkers.

Read the reviews

When to use a free plagiarism checker?

Many free plagiarism checkers do not detect all the plagiarism in a document. In some cases, this might pose a problem, but sometimes a free version is good enough.

You can best use a free plagiarism checker when:

• You’re only checking small snippets of text (maximum one page)
• You want to test it before buying the premium version
• No one else will check your text for plagiarism

Disadvantages of free plagiarism checkers

Free plagiarism checkers can be useful, but they often have serious disadvantages compared to paid plagiarism checkers. Many free plagiarism checkers:

• Do not detect all plagiarism
• Have usage limits
• Store, publish or even sell your work
• Have a lot of advertisements
• Have no customer support
• Reserve certain features for the paid version

Free plagiarism checker reviews

Scribbr

Review

Scribbr’s plagiarism checker is developed specifically for students. Checking your paper, thesis or essay has never been easier, safer or more accurate. The technology used is as advanced (if not more) as software used by most universities.

Besides showing a plagiarism percentage, the plagiarism report includes a list of all sources that are similar to your document. This makes adding a missing citation very easy.

In addition to checking for plagiarism, Scribbr has an extensive Knowledge Base that helps you understand plagiarism so you can avoid it in the future.

Visit Scribbr Plagiarism Checker

1. Quetext

Review

The generated plagiarism report of the Quetext Plagiarism Checker provides a nice overview and is easy to understand. Similarities are underlined, and a plagiarism percentage is displayed.

Quetext offers a free trial of three checks (up to 500 words) in the hope that users will switch to the paid version of $9.99 per month after the trial ends. Overall, Quetext is a safe plagiarism checker to use. However, if you’re willing to pay money for a plagiarism checker, there are better alternatives, such as the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker.

2. EasyBib

Review

EasyBib’s plagiarism checker is developed specifically for students. You can either upload a document or copy and paste text to use the plagiarism checker.

EasyBib detected 19% plagiarism and placed second in this comparison of free plagiarism checkers. Unfortunately, the free trial lasts only three days, after which it’s automatically converted into a paid subscription.

EasyBib is fairly easy to use, and it includes a built-in citation and spell check tool. If this is what you’re looking for, then Easybib’s plagiarism checker might be something for you. Do keep in mind that all the documents you upload are added to BibMe’s plagiarism database.

3. PlagScan

Review

PlagScan completes the top-three free plagiarism checkers. It detected 17% of the plagiarism in our test document.

From beginning to end, the PlagScan plagiarism checker is easy to use. It’s possible to upload files from your computer, copy and paste your text, or upload a file via Dropbox or Google Drive.

The plagiarism report is easy to understand. It shows you a percentage, a list of sources and an overview of your document that highlights the plagiarized text.

Unfortunately, only the first 2,000 words are free. PlagScan hopes that those who like the tool will eventually pay for it. For $10, you can check another 20,000 words.

4. Plagramme

Review

With a detected plagiarism percentage of 16%, Plagramme placed fourth in this comparison. The technology is slightly worse than PlagScan and EasyBib. The plagiarism report can be complicated, and it sometimes falsely marks commonly used phrases as plagiarism.

Although Plagramme is on this list of free plagiarism checkers, it’s not really free to use. The free version scans your document and only gives you the plagiarism percentage. It doesn’t show you which paragraphs are plagiarized. To unlock that information, you need to pay around $0.35 per page.

5. Copyleaks

Review

Copyleaks detected only 7% plagiarism, whereas other free plagiarism checkers such as Quetext found 29%. That’s because Copyleaks cannot detect plagiarism if a sentence is restructured or when a word in a sentence is replaced.

Every month, you can check 2,500 words for free. If you need more than that, then you can go for the subscription (starting at $11 per month) or for the prepaid option. For an additional 25,000 words, you will need to pay around $10 to $13.

The plagiarism report is easy to understand, and it shows all the sources containing text that is similar to yours. The report displays a plagiarism check percentage and highlights the plagiarized content.

Be aware that every document you upload is added to the Copyleaks database.

6. Small SEO Tools

Review

The plagiarism checker offered by Small SEO Tools is developed for marketers. It can be useful for checking small snippets of text for plagiarism, especially if you might have copied exact sentences from other sources.

However, Small SEO Tools does not detect plagiarized sentences that are slightly changed. A lot of plagiarism stays undetected because of this, as can be seen with our test document: only 5% plagiarism was detected.

The plagiarism report has three different views: the “document view,” which highlights all the plagiarized text; the “matched sources view,” which connects the plagiarized sentences to the original source; and the “sentence wise result,” which analyses each sentence separately.

Overall, it’s an easy-to-use plagiarism checker. It works well for small snippets of text, but it’s not suitable for papers and other large documents.

7. Grammarly

Review

Surprisingly, Grammarly found only 1% of the plagiarism in our test document. In addition, the free version of Grammarly’s plagiarism checker has very few options for detecting and correcting plagiarism.

If you get a notification that your document contains plagiarism, then you probably want to know which sentences you need to check. To find that out, you’ll need to commit to the paid version, which costs around $12 per month with a yearly plan or $29.95 with a monthly plan.

Is it worth paying for it? If you already pay for Grammarly, then this tool can definitely help you avoid plagiarism. If you don’t, then there are better and cheaper alternatives, such as the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker.

8. Search Engine Reports

Review

Search Engine Reports’ plagiarism checker detected only 4% of the plagiarism in our test document. The main reason for this is that Search Engine Reports uses Google’s exact search, which means that every individual sentence is searched on Google to see whether a matching source is found.

If you only want to check a few sentences for plagiarism, then this plagiarism checker might help you. However, if you want to check multiple pages, it isn’t useful at all because the plagiarism report leaves you with more questions than you began with.

The plagiarized text it not highlighted, and the report cannot tell you what the original source is. It can only tell you that Google found a similar-looking sentence on another webpage.

9. PaperRater

Review

While most free plagiarism checkers use Google’s “exact search” to check every sentence separately, PaperRater can consider whole paragraphs and conveniently link to matched sources. This makes it really easy to correctly cite the sections you accidentally forgot to cite.

However, PaperRater failed to detect any plagiarism in our test document. Therefore, we do not recommend this plagiarism checker.

10. Edubirdie

Review

Edubirdie detected only 4% of the plagiarism in our text document, whereas the other free checks found up to 29%. This shows that there are better alternatives to this service. In addition, we do not recommend using the Edubirdie’s plagiarism checker as its connection with its essay-writing service is unclear.

The terms of use, which every user has to accept, clearly states that you grant Edubirdie a royalty-free licence for your work. In other words, they might sell the text that you upload. This is the last thing you want, especially if you’re a student checking your essay for plagiarism.