It is often not so easy to find out whether you have plagiarized something or not. Because the rules for citing can be very confusing, most of the time you won’t even know what you are still allowed to do and what not. That’s why you should still use a service that offers professional plagiarism checking, even if you have already checked your work for plagiarism yourself. This is the only way you can be sure that your work is actually free of plagiarism! Unfortunately, many plagiarism checks are not for free. However, we will show you what options you have to perform a plagiarism check free online.
Why is a plagiarism check important?
A professional plagiarism check is important because it can help you put your work to the test and see if you have actually created something new and original. If you simply copy someone else’s work, you probably won’t be able to receive credit for your work and rank high on search engines. A plagiarism check can also help you avoid being penalized for your work.
For online content, this can help protect copyright. When an author publishes an article or other online content, they want to make sure that their content is not copied by someone else and passed off as their own. A plagiarism checker can help prevent this from happening. For a scientific paper, a plagiarism check is also relevant, as plagiarism can lead to the paper being rejected or the author being penalized.
A plagiarism scanner is a useful tool to check your own content or the content of others for plagiarism. There are many different plagiarism scanners that you can use for an online plagiarism check. As already mentioned, many of these scanners are unfortunately not cheap and have to be paid for, which is why we want to introduce you to free alternatives in this article. If you would like to get a more detailed insight into what a plagiarism scanner can do and how it works, you can have a look here. Otherwise, we have created a list of free online plagiarism checkers for you:
Plagiarism check free online: The top 10 tools with their advantages and disadvantages
The Plagiarism Check plugin from WordPress is an open source software and can be used completely free of charge. It is especially good for bloggers and people who work a lot with online content, as the plugin prevents you from being penalized by Google and other search engines for unintentional duplicate content. The plugin searches online for sections in your posts that may duplicate content that can already be found on the web (even in a different context or on websites you don’t know about).
✔️ free and easy to install
✔️ very suitable for bloggers and content creators
✔️ links to search results for any problematic term or section
❌ has not been updated in the last 4 years and may be out of date
Quetext’s free plagiarism scanner is very simple and effective, you paste the text you want to check on the Quetext website and get a duplicate content check in a database of various websites. In addition, Quetext’s deep search feature can also check content for contextual plagiarism, not just common words. Contextual plagiarism checks sentences in the context of neighboring lines. In doing so, Quetext advertises for students, teachers and copywriters.
Free, easy to use and very appealing interface
also well suited for copywriters and content creators
you can upload multiple files (up to 5 files) for comprehensive plagiarism checking
exportable PDF reports
❌ the depth search is a paid feature
❌ unlimited reports only with paid version ($9.99 per month)
SmallSEOTools online plagiarism checker is completely free and easy to use. All you have to do is paste the text you want to check on the website and click the “Check for plagiarism” button. You can copy the text and paste it into the given text field, or you can upload a file. You can also check for plagiarism using website URLs. You can perform a free plagiarism check of up to 1,000 words.
✔️ free of charge up to 1,000 words
✔️ multiple file formats supported like Word documents, PDF, etc. uploadable directly in the tool
✔️ Possibility to upload documents from the cloud (Google Drive and Dropbox).
❌ free version is not as effective as the premium versions
Duplichecker offers a free plagiarism check for teachers and individual users. With Duplichecker, all you have to do is paste the text into the text field at the top of the page and the plagiarism scanner will do the rest. Besides, one can upload various document files or even have URLs checked. Thus, one can test up to 1,000 words for free.
✔️ free of charge up to 1,000 words
✔️ multiple file formats supported like Word documents, PDF, etc. uploadable directly in the tool
✔️ usable in multiple languages
❌ you need a free account for several searches per day
Plagium is a plagiarism scanner that allows you to check various texts of up to 1,000 characters for potential plagiarism for free. For an occasional free plagiarism search, all you have to do is paste any text into a text window and click on “Quick Search”. As long as you don’t have too many searches, you won’t be charged at all. As a regular user, with a Plagium account, one can also purchase search credits to get access to more features.
✔️ free of charge and easy to use
✔️ also checks social media sites like Facebook and Twitter for plagiarism
✔️ you can increase the number of characters cheaply, without subscription
❌ you have to register to get access to more features.
❌ the free version allows only quick search and no deep search
Plagiarismchecker.com is another online tool where you can instantly copy any text into a text box to perform a free plagiarism check. The plagiarism scanner can be used by teachers as well as authors. The tool will show if someone has plagiarized information from the Internet, or even if someone has plagiarized your work and spread it on the Internet.
✔️ fast, free and easy to use.
✔️ you can check documents and also websites for possible plagiarism
✔️ allows you to create Google alerts for specific terms of your content and warns you when someone publishes plagiarized or duplicate content
the plagiarism checker website has an irritating design and is very advertisement-heavy
no file upload functions and no support for different file formats
Viper describes itself as a cheaper plagiarism check alternative to Turnitin that can be used online and is designed for versatile use. In doing so, Viper primarily targets students, teachers, entrepreneurs, and even individuals. Viper can help you detect, monitor and reduce plagiarism in your documents. You can simply upload your document and it will run a free plagiarism check with 10 billion sources.
✔️ Free, easy to use and responsive interface.
✔️ no subscriptions or monthly plans only paid credits as needed
✔️ low-cost alternative to other plagiarism scanners with unlimited resubmission of texts
❌ Viper is intended for more educational purposes and less for bloggers or online publishers.
PlagiarismCheck.org is a reliable plagiarism scanner focused on helping teachers, students and authors of online content. It is especially useful if you want to check your own post for plagiarized content. After you upload your text, PlagiarismCheck scans the content and matches it against a regularly updated database. It then flags the problematic content and generates a report of plagiarized sections. As an institute, you can claim a free demo and as an individual user, you can have one page checked at a time for free.
✔️ one free page each, additional pages chargeable ($5.99 per page, but no subscription required
✔️ multiple file formats supported like Word documents, PDF, etc. directly uploadable in the tool
❌ after the first free trial, the paid version is introduced, which is not very cheap
❌ does not guarantee the rating and therefore is not helpful for lawsuits for duplicate or inauthentic content
Copyscape offers a plagiarism checker for free, which is mainly related to the content of websites. All you have to do is enter the URL of the website you want to check and Copyscape Plagiarism Scanner will show you how much of your website’s content is similar to other websites or how much of your content has been copied. Additionally, you can use another free feature where you can compare your website directly with another selected website. Copyscape thus stands out from its competitors by not only checking your content for plagiarism, but also finding out who may have stolen your content. However, you need a subscription to Copyscape Premium for unlimited scans.
✔️ Free, easy to use and simple interface.
✔️ especially suitable for content creators with their own websites
✔️ provides banners and badges for your website to prevent content theft.
✔️ has a WordPress plugin to find and match copied content on WordPress website.
❌ the WordPress plugin is chargeable
❌ for unlimited and better scans a paid subscription is necessary
If you run a website or blog, you know how hard it is to find content scrapers who steal your content and publish it elsewhere. DMCA is the salvation from this kind of plagiarism. When plagiarism is discovered on other sites, you can file a DMCA notice and the guilty site/source will be taken off the web based on the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. With the free plagiarism checker, one can make up to two scans.
✔️ up to 2 free scans
✔️ Protects websites, images, videos, graphics and text from theft and is good for bloggers and content creators
✔️ most respected copyright infringement authority shows visitors that you own the rights to your content
✔️ allows adding watermarks to image
❌ after 2 scans you have to switch to the paid version
Rewrite text and prevent plagiarism
To prevent plagiarism in the first place, it is recommended to rewrite recycled texts and reused content instead of simply copying them. When you rewrite a text, there is a higher chance that the text will be truly original and unique. However, it’s not always easy to think of creative new phrases when you want to rewrite a text. Artificial intelligence can help you here as well.
With the free neuroflash text generator, you can easily rephrase existing texts and even change the tonality of the text. All you have to do is enter the text you want to rephrase into the text field of the neuroflash app and select the desired tonalities you want the text to have, and neuroflash will offer you alternatives:
You can also reword individual sentences or sections of your text directly in Writer:
By rewriting your texts, you can prevent plagiarism and save yourself the trouble and expense of online plagiarism checking.
Conclusion
Whether you are a copywriter, a student, or a teacher, you should definitely try to detect and avoid plagiarism in your content and the content of others. To that end, there are many different ways to perform a plagiarism check online for free. The different options offer different advantages and disadvantages, so it’s important to do your research before choosing a platform. A good plagiarism checker can help improve your own writing and ensure that you don’t unintentionally copy someone else’s work.
