Plagiarism is a serious concerns amongst writers, students and teachers alike and thus the need to check for plagiarism is on a high.

If you’re worried about traces of duplicate content in your essays or academic writing or blog content, you’ve come to the right place.

Duplicate content is the number one issue teachers and academic professors face with college assignments. The same goes for writers, bloggers and students who constantly need to avoid plagiarism in their writing.

In this article, I’ll list our top 20 best free plagiarism checker tools online for teachers and students that will help you detect copied content, check for intentional and unintentional plagiarism and address the issue easily.

Sounds interesting?

Let’s start!

 What you’ll learn in this article? 

1. What is plagiarism and types of plagiarism
2. Why you need to be using plagiarism checkers right now
3. Top 20 Best free plagiarism checkers tools and websites online
4. Advantages of using plagiarism checkers
5. How you can prevent plagiarism effectively (FAQs)

Click Here To Skip These & Directly Scroll To Our Best Free Plagiarism Checker Tool Section.

What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is essentially the “imitation of someone else’s work” without giving them their due credit.

Wikipedia defines plagiarism as the “wrongful appropriation” and “stealing and publication” of another author’s “language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions” and the representation of them as one’s own original work.

Merriam Webster’s online dictionary defines the act of “plagiarizing” as:

• stealing and passing off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own,
• Using (another’s production) without citing the source,
• committing literary theft,
• presenting as new and original an idea or derived from someone’s else work.

Plagiarism is different from copyright infringement as in plagiarism is not a crime in itself but more of an ethical offence. In schools, colleges or academia in general, plagiarism can lead to getting your project rejected, deduction of marks or even rustication from the university.

The US law considers any sort of documented ideas (in any format like book, website writing, computer file) as an intellectual property of the owner and falls within the same range as stealing someone else’s invention.

Examples of Plagiarism:

There are dime a dozen examples of plagiarism and some of them are as follows:

1. copying someone else’s work without citing them properly,
2. paying an external writer/essay mill to write the essay on your behalf,
3. stealing ideas and verbal conversations (overheard during discussions etc) and presenting them as your own,
4. copying data from websites, library books and other sources verbatim,
5. using someone else’s images, music, videos and even style of writing in your own work without their explicit permission is a punishable plagiarism example.

What Are The Different Types of Plagiarism?

Plagiarism can commonly be divided into 5 types. They are as follows:

1. Direct plagiarism: Copying someone’s work verbatim (word by word) without giving credits.
2. Self-plagiarism: Copying or producing an assignment influenced by your own previous work (also called unintentional plagiarism).
3. Mosaic or patchwork plagiarism: Quoting someone else’s work without quotation mark or changing the language (of original work) while keeping the structure same.
4. Accidental plagiarism: Unintentionally forgetting to cite the original work, misquotation etc.
5. Outsourcing: Paying essay mills, friends, hiring article writers, bloggers to write on your behalf.

For more detailed description of different types of plagiarism with examples, click here.

Now that you know different forms of plagiarism and how big an issue it is to produce copied content, let’s now hop on to next segment of detecting plagiarized and duplicate content.

Most of these anti plagiarism software double up as free plagiarism checkers and proofreaders.

Best Free Plagiarism Checker Tools For Teachers & Students (2018)

Here’s a list of Top 20 best plagiarism checkers for teachers and students to help you detect duplicate content:

Most of these are free online plagiarism checkers but the ones with a price tag are definitely worth every penny because they detect the smallest traces of copied content and display result with percentage report (exportable).

1. Grammarly (Best Plagiarism Checker, Ever!)

Grammarly is by far the best plagiarism checker tool for teachers and students alike. Trusted by universities like Berkeley, Stanford University and University of Michigan, Grammarly is an automated proofreader and plagiarism checker.

How Does Grammarly Process & Detect Plagiarized Content?

Grammarly has a huge database of 16 billion web pages and ProQuest’s databases and every document/writing you process through it is instantly scanned by Grammarly’s plagiarism checker to find any traces of similarity or copied content. If you’re looking for the best plagiarism checker like turnitin, Grammarly is your thing.

With Grammarly’s expertise to scan document based on the document type the chances of unoriginal text break to a minimum. This makes it the preferred website to check for plagiarism for teachers. Some of the document types are:

• Academic documents (essays, research proposal, case studies, or book and literature reviews to name a few)
• Business documents
• Medical documents
• Creative writings (scripts, novels etc)

Not only that…

Grammarly also holds the crown of the World’s largest used grammar checker tool which checks for over 400+ types of grammar mistakes, contextual spelling mistakes, redundancy and incorrect sentence structure to name a few. Read my hands-on Grammarly review for more detailed info.

Grammarly is available for free as a browser extension and also as offline MS Word add-in, and Outlook integration. Grammarly plagiarism checker is undoubtedly the best online plagiarism checker for students and teachers with percentage score.

Pros of Grammarly Plagiarism Checker:

• Grammarly is trusted by over 600 universities and millions of bloggers, writers and creative people.
• Detects the slightest chance of plagiarized content and displays percentage report.
• Efficient grammar and punctuation checker (you sure can have different tools for this, but having everything in one place is a bonus).
• Free online plagiarism checker with percentage.
• Proofreader at its best along with free PDF report of all errors (including detected plagiarism) that can be exported.
• The ability to scan document based on document style and type makes it even more efficient than it’s competitor plagiarism checkers.
• Emails you your weekly performance report (how many words you wrote, improvement in writing style etc) which is a good boost if you’re using to improve your English on the side.

Cons Of Grammarly’s Plagiarism Checker:

• I’ve been using Grammarly for quite a couple of years now and Grammarly plagiarism checker has no cons to be honest and it shows why it is the most used plagiarism checker by writers, bloggers and academic professionals. Try It Now.

Also Read:

Grammarly Detailed Review: Check how it can help you and why you’re missing out if you don’t use it!

How To Prevent Plagiarism Effortlessly Once & For All (No Tools Needed!)

2. Whitesmoke Plagiarism Checker (Best Plagiarism Checker For Teachers)

Whitesmoke is one of the top plagiarism checking software that is very robust and accurate. Besides being a grammar checker and proofreader, Whitesmoke’s anti-plagiarism software is trusted by many.

Whitesmoke scans billions of online web pages and resources to check for unoriginal content or copied content in your document and displays the same.

Whitesmoke online plagiarism checker isn’t as famous and efficient as Grammarly’s but makes a great alternative if you want to try out. With browser, MS Word and Outlook integrations it takes your content analysis to the next level.

Pros:

• Scans and matches your essay with billions of web pages to detect similarity in your essay.
• It is cross platform supported and also available online so its easy to use.
• Best plagiarism checker for research papers.

Cons:

• Doesn’t have as large a database as Grammarly so obviously it effects your analysis.
• There are not many cons of Whitesmoke so you can choose it safely.

Try WhiteSmoke Now ››

3. Duplichecker: Best Free Plagiarism Checker

Duplichecker is one of the best free plagiarism checkers for teachers and writers. Duplichecker does not cost a dime so it’s handy if you want to check your writing/school assignments or student submissions on the go.

If you outsource of a lot of online content (blog articles) from freelance writers or you are preparing an academic essay, thesis or any other assignment then Duplichecker is a must have in your content arsenal.

With Duplichecker, you need to just paste the text in the text box on the top of the page and hit “check for plagiarism” button. You can also upload a Word Doc if you prefer it that way.

Pros:

• Duplichecker is a free online tool to detect plagiarism so you can use it to your heart’s content.
• It provides over 50 scans for duplicate content each day which is makes it ideal for teachers to bulk check essays/papers.
• Duplichecker is very easy to use hence there is no learning curve.

Cons:

• Each search is limited to 1000 words.
• You require to create a free account to have more than one search per day.

Recommended readings:

• Best Online Proofreading Tools the pros use.
• Comma issues? See how you can end it once and for all.

4. PlagiarismCheck.org

PlagiarismCheck.org is a reliable plagiarism checker tool that focuses on helping teachers, students, online content creators. PlagiarismCheck is been around for 5 years and uses a sophisticated algorithm that analyzes your content, literary writing, essay, script etc to make sure they’re one of a kind with no traces of duplicate content.

It is extremely useful if you want to review your own submission for plagiarized content (unintentional plagiarism) before submitting it to your college professor or content authority.

After you upload your writing, PlagiarismCheck scans and matches your content with a regularly updated database of writing. It then marks the unoriginal content and generates a report of plagiarized content.

Pros:

• It is an efficient anti-plagiarism checker or software to check plagiarism that you miss while checking manually.
• Even if it is a paid tool, it offers one free trial of it’s plagiarism checker so you can use it to see if it matches your expectation.
• You can upload multiple file formats like Word Doc, PDF, rtf etc directly to the tool.

Cons:

• It introduces the paid plan after the first free trial.
• PlagiarismCheck.org is not cheap. With $0.30 per 275 words it comes out as even more costlier than Grammarly that has a LOT more to offer.
• It clearly mentions, PlagiarismCheck.org doesn’t warranty the score so it is not helpful if you’re planning to file a lawsuit for duplicate or unauthentic content.

5. Quetext: Best Plagiarism Checker & Citation Assistant

Quetext is what started as a basic duplicate content checker but has now achieved some of the coolest features that make it to the top 10 of our list pf best plagiarism checkers. The free version is simple and intuitive where you paste your text on their website and get it matched for duplicate content across a database of web pages and others.

With QueText’s DeepSearch feature you can get your content checked not only against common words but also for contextual plagiarism. With contextual plagiarism, your sentences in the essay gets checked as a context of the neighboring lines. It’s a great free online plagiarism checker to check research papers for free.

This makes it the best plagiarism checker for students to make sure your essay is error-free before submitting. Read my detailed Quetext review to know more.

Pros:

• Quetext is one of the best free plagiarism detector software for teachers, students, freelance writers and any content creator.
• Quetext seems to have a better search and match technology where it uses contextual analysis to find duplicate sentences/phrases that other tools can easily ignore.
• Multiple file uploads (up to 5 files) for bulk checking.
• Best Free online plagiarism checker with report (exportable PDF reports)

Cons:

• The free version doesn’t include DeepSearch Technology
• Unlimited reports can be used only with the paid version which costs $9.99 per month.

6. SmallSEOTools Plagiarism Checker

SmallSEOTools is unique in its own way. It is a platform where one can get several tools with highly lavish features. Besides providing a plagiarism detection tool, it also offers a host of other useful SEO tools such the Article Rewriter, Keyword Position, Online Ping Website Tool, Backlink Checker, Backlink Maker, Link Tracker, Google PageRank Checker, Domain authority checker, Word Count Checker, Spell Checker tool, and many more.

Although its plagiarism checker is quite a basic type, people love it as it is totally free of cost.

Once you copy-text then paste in the given space and click the ‘Check for Plagiarism’ button, it would check the text in seconds. You can see the copied text in red.

If you’re looking for a free plagiarism checker then SmallSEOTools’s Plagiarism checker is one of the best sites to check plagiarism.

Pros:

• SmallSEOTools is a simple and effective free online plagiarism checker for students.
• Offers a variety of other tools which can be helpful if you’re looking to check plagiarism for web content.
• The ability to upload documents from cloud (google drive and dropbox) makes it a winner in our list of duplicate content checkers.

Cons:

• The free version is not as effective as premium versions of Grammarly or Whitesmoke’s.

7. Copyleaks:

Copyleaks is another free Copyscape alternatives that serves as a plagiarism detection tool as well as copyright protection tool. With Copyleaks, you can not only find duplicate content in your own writing (or students’ essay) but also helps you fight content theft by showing you where else your content is used online.

Copyleaks for education allows you to bulk check up to 100 thesis, essays and research submissions at once which is a great time saver for schools.

One main benefit of Copyleaks is, it offers a free plagiarism checker mobile app to help you on the go.

Pros:

• Works in any language
• Has huge user submitted internal database (for accurate results) that is used to match for similar content.
• Check submitted text file against one another for plagiarism.
• They have a business segment that caters to plagiarism detection for SEO agencies and publishers.

Cons:

• Copyleaks allows you to scan up to 2500 words per month for free.
• For more, you need to sign up for their paid plan.

8. Viper Plagiarism Checker (ScanMyEssay)

Viper plagiarism checker claims itself to be the free alternative to Turnitin plagiarism checker. It also displays links to plagiarized work online so that you can identify copycats and protect your intellectual work. It is not one of the best plagiarism checkers you can fingrammd online (like Grammarly’s) but it serves the purpose if you’re looking for a cheaper alternative.

Pros :

• Low-cost alternative to plagiarism checkers like Turnitin and WriteCheck.
• Checks for unoriginal content from a variety of text files, books, journals etc.

Cons:

• Viper is geared towards educational uses and not for bloggers or online publishers.

9. CheckForPlagiarism.net

Developed by the combined efforts of professionals, computer scientists, and the academicians, CheckForPlagiarism is appareled with a great number of features. It is equally helpful to the students, teachers, professionals, writers, and the publishers etc. to keep a check on the evil of plagiarism.

Pros:

• Checks for similarity with internet versions, books, journals and magazine to reduce the scope of copying.
• Multi-language support to check plagiarism in Spanish, German, French, Italian & English.

Cons:

• Absence of free trial.

10. ProWritingAid:

ProWritingAid’s online plagiarism checker tool is one of the best in the market. It helps to check for copied content in manuscripts, novels, or literary works. ProWritingAid is the best website for plagiarism check for authors/creative writers.

Pros:

• Checks for plagiarism directly from the MS Word via the add-in.
• Works fine with Scrivener.
• It effeciently detects even 10% plagiarism in your manuscript.

Cons:

• Lowest plan starts at $10 for 10 checks or $60 for unlimited checks.

11. WordPress Plagiarism Checker Plugin:

If you’re a blogger like me who outsources of a lot of content, having a plagiarism checker plugin for WordPress comes handy. It directly checks any unoriginal content in your posts directly before publishing.

  Recommended:  If you run a WordPress Site, do power it with Elegant Themes (check out my Elegant Themes review here or get Elegant Themes discount coupons here.

Pros:

• Sits in the dashboard and quite useful for bloggers.

Cons:sea

• Hasn’t been updated in the last 4 years (while this doesn’t imply that it is not secure to use).

12. Plagium:

Plagium helps you compare two documents side by side to detect similar content in them. It also helps you check your thesis, paper for duplicate content published not only across the web but also on social media sites like Facebook. This unique feature has earned Plagium the 12th spot in our list of best plagiarism checkers online.

This helps you find if someone has copied from social media sites or not.

Pros:

• Institutional account is available for multiple users in an institution.
• You can check your text directly on the web page you get on by clicking the above link.
• The paid version has multiple file uploading feature where you can compare similarity of two writings.

Cons:

• You have to signup to get access to more features.
• free version allows you only quick search and you need paid account to perform deep search.

13. PlagiarismChecker:

This is another best free plagiarism checker tool online that you can use to check queries instantly. Just copy and paste your text file on the text box hit search.

Pros:

• Helps you check for multiple phrases at once.
• You can also check a live web page for plagiarized content and email you results (currently in beta).
• Allows you to create google alerts for certain phrases of your content so that when someone plagiarizes or publishes a duplicate piece of the content then it alerts you to take action.

Cons:

• Ad-heavy plagiarism checker website irritates me.
• No file uploading features or support for multiple file formats.

14. Copyscape:

Detecting the redundant contents on your blog or website would be a matter of seconds with Copyscape. You can simply enter the URL of the site you desire to check or use the inbuilt Siteliner, and the Copyscape would bring forth how much of your content has similarity with the other websites or how much of your content has been copied.

Copyscape takes a new twist in detecting copied content. It is different from our list of top plagiarism checkers in that, instead of finding piracy in your content, Copyscape helps you see who stole your content to publish it online.

Pros:

• Simple user-interface.
• It provides banners and badges to add to your site to deter content theft.
• It has a WordPress plugin that uses Copyscape API to match and find duplicate content on your WordPress site.

Cons:

• WordPress integration is chaegeable.

15. DMCA Scan:

If you run a website or blog then you can understand how hard it is to find content scrappers that steal your content and publish it elsewhere. DMCA comes to the rescue from this type of plagiarism.

With over 862K sites trusting them, DMCA is one of the most reputed and competent tool for copyright infringement. It helps you protect your intellectual content from piracy and thus save you from duplicate content penalty from search engines.

If found guilty, you can file a DMCA content take-down notice and the culprit site/source will be taken down based on the stipulation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This support definitely makes it one of the best plagiarism checker tools if you want to protect your content online.

Pros:

• Protects website, images, videos, graphics and text from theft.
• Since it is the most respected authority on copyright infringement, the badges it offers let’s your visitors know that you own the rights to the content and it cannot be reproduced elsewhere.
• Allows you to add watermark to images to discourage hotlinking, image theft (you can watermark millions of images in seconds).

Cons:

• The free version allows only 2 scans and requires you to opt for the paid scan.

Other Best Free Plagiarism Checker Tools Online (Free & Premium)

With a little more research for the top best plagiarism checker on Reddit, I found these 5 anti-plagiarism software and tools that are worth a mention.

1. Dustball
2. WebConf’s similar page schecker
3. Plagtracker
4. Plagiarisma
5. Paperrater plagiarism checker
6. Unplag

Now I hope you liked our ultimate list of 20 best free plagiarism checker tools online. Let’s see which one is what we recommend.

Over To You: What Is The Best Plagiarism Checker Online 2o18?

Wondering what is the best plagiarism checker in 2018?

With quite a lot research on best plagiarism checker Reddit and other platforms and after extensively studying many of these tools to detect plagiarism and using quite a few of them, I have come to this  conclusion that Grammarly is by far the best plagiarism checker you can get your hands on.

It is not only a spontaneous plagiarism checker but also helps in numerous other functions so we won’t actually need to keep a separate tool for each of them. Along with being the most preferred grammar checker tool, it acts as a plagiarism checker online with percentage display.

Grammarly has good reviews from teachers, students, writers and professionals alike. Over 600 reputed universities trust Grammarly and millions of users use it regularly to improve their writing, create original content and excel at studies/job. Click here to learn what else you can do with Grammarly.

Sign up for Grammarly (It’s Free)!

Or save more with the premium version by availing Grammarly discount coupon here.

What is your favorite Best free plagiarism checker tool online? What do you use to check plagiarism for free?

Comment below your best plagiarism checker and say why you love it.

Common Plagiarism FAQs

1) Are free plagiarism checkers efficient enough?

No. No matter what the plagiarism software or plagiarism website tells you on the face, free plagiarism checker tools are not half as efficient as paid ones. If you see, most free versions of plagiarism checkers have a upsell to a paid plan. That’s why, free plagiarism checkers are not efficient.

2) Are Premium Plagiarism Checkers Worth The Money?

Yes. Premium plagiarism checkers provide a plethora of tools and features like deepsearch, checking for contextual plagiarism, multiple file uploads, single institutional account for multiple usernames etc.

Here, you have to be careful with what you choose, though. If you see our list of best plagiarism checker tools  and websites, Grammarly is unbeaten with number of users, universities trusting it plus the features it offers as a whole. Check out it’s features.

3) What to do when you find duplicate content or your content is plagiarized?

If you’re a teacher scanning students’ submissions and find duplicate content, you can take action against this academic dishonesty based on the level of copied content. On serious instances, you could terminate the student from school (or as your official manual says).

If you’re a website owner and find someone copying your website, you can file a DMCA takedown notice. Alternativly, you can file a Google Copyright Removal which is free and hassle-free. It also gives you the liberty to file a lawsuit against copyright infringement.

4) Is plagiarism similar to copyright infringement?

No plagiarism is not similar to copyright infringement as the latter is more bound by legal procedures and is taken as a criminal offence. However, plagiarism is considered as dishonesty and might lead to criminal offecne in certain cases.

5) Did I plagiarize?

To know if you plagiarized or not, simply scan your document through any of the above online plagiarism checker tools and notice the result. A plagiarism report of 10% or low is generally not considered as offense in academic plagiarism. If it exceeds more than that, you have to double check your document to see if you copied content or forgot to cite them properly.

6) Can I copy text from Wikipedia?

Yes, of course. As long as you cite the source accurately giving credit where it’s due, you can use text from Wikipedia in your writing. Wikipedia’s content is licensed under Copyleft ( CC-BY-SA & GNU Free Documentation License or GFDL) which means you are free to reuse, modify as long as you attribute the source.

But, if you’re a website owner, reusing Wikipedia content cannot help you to rank your website as Google loves fresh and new content.

7) What do teachers use to check plagiarism?

Most teachers use plagiarism checkers like Grammarly, Turnitin (or WriteCheck) to efficiently check for plagiarism, generate report of percentage of plagiarized content and take action. Above is a list of all the top 20 best plagiarism checker tools teachers use. Some of them are also the preferred plagiarism checker for UIUC like institutions.

8) How to write plagiarism free content?

In order to write plagiarism free, original content you need to research and write your own summary. In situations where you need to use others’ ideas, writing or sayings you need to properly quote or cite them to prevent plagiarism. Here is a ultimate guide to avoid plagiarism and write original content that fetches full grades.

9) What are the various plagiarism laws and legal rules?

There are plenty of laws and legal provisions to prevent copyright infringement and put a check for plagiarism. Here is an extensive list of plagiarism laws and legal examples related to it.

Made it to the bottom? Congratulations!!

Now, bookmark this page so that you stay updated whenever a tool drops it’s ratings or a new tool is added to our list of best free plagiarism checkers online. Do share it across your favorite social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter etc).

Thank you!!

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