The short answer
Turnitin does not sell to individuals. If your school has it, use it there. If not, you can check a draft with one of the eight tools below. Each one works without a school account. Three things are true for all of them:
- None can predict your Turnitin score. Each tool searches its own sources, so two tools give two results for the same paper.
- None has Turnitin’s student papers. Turnitin says it compares work with a repository of student papers. Other tools cannot search it.
- All of them can still be useful. A check can show you sentences that match a web page or a publication, so you can quote or cite them before you hand the work in.
Comparison tables
Each cell is a fact from the maker’s own site, linked in the sources below. Prices are the listed prices in US dollars on 10 October 2026. The first table covers access and price. The second covers what each tool checks.
Access and price
| Tool | Who it is for | Free allowance | Sign-up needed | Starting paid price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plagiarism Checker Plus (ours) | Students, teachers, writers. Anyone can use it alone. | First plagiarism check and first AI check free, up to 1,000 words each. A free account includes 3,000 words a month. | Not for the first check. A free account after that. | Student plan $4.99 a month, or $3.99 a month billed yearly. See pricing. |
| Copyleaks | Its pricing page has Individual, Enterprise and Education plans. | AI detector: up to 25,000 characters free. New users get free credits for AI and plagiarism checks. The number of credits is not stated. | Yes, to try the plagiarism checker free. | Personal plan $16.99 a month, or $13.99 a month billed yearly at $167.88. |
| Duplichecker | Its home page names students, teachers and researchers. | Free plagiarism checker on the home page. The box showed a 10,000-character counter. Free AI detector with a 2,000-word counter. | No. The page says the tool does not ask for registration. | Basic plan $9.99 a month for 100 searches and 30,000 words. |
| Grammarly | Its page says the checker is designed for academia and useful for anyone. | Free AI detector that shows a percentage. The limit is not stated. Plagiarism detection is listed in a paid plan. | Not stated on the pages we read. | The plans page showed a local currency. No US dollar price read. |
| Originality.ai | Its pricing page names website owners, content marketers, writers and publishers. Its home page also names teachers and students. | AI detection only: 3 scans a day, up to 2,000 words a scan. | No, for the free AI scans. | Pro plan $14.95 a month, or $12.95 a month billed yearly. |
| QuillBot | Its help centre names writers, academics, business and legal professionals, journalists and content creators. | AI Detector is free for all users. The plagiarism checker is not on the free plan. | Yes, a Premium account for the plagiarism checker. Not stated for the AI Detector. | Its help centre says the Premium price depends on your region. No price read. |
| Scribbr | Students and academics. Its page says it is not for copywriters, SEO or business owners. | AI Detector: unlimited free checks, up to 1,200 words each. The plagiarism checker is paid. | No, for the AI Detector. Not stated for the plagiarism checker. | $19.95 per document up to 7,499 words. Paid per check, not a subscription. |
| ZeroGPT | Its pricing page lists Personal plans and Business and EDU plans. | A free plan at $0 with sign-up. The AI detector box on the home page showed a 15,000-character counter. | Yes, for the plagiarism checker. Not stated for the AI detector. | Not stated on the pages we read. |
What each tool checks
| Tool | Plagiarism check | AI detection | Sentence-level AI results | Source links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plagiarism Checker Plus (ours) | Yes. | Yes. | Yes. An overall score and a likelihood for every sentence. | Yes. Every matching passage is linked to its source. |
| Copyleaks | Yes. | Yes. Paid plans scan for AI and plagiarism in a single report. | Yes. Its page says sentence-by-sentence insights come with a free account. | Yes. Its page says the report includes web page links for the findings. |
| Duplichecker | Yes. | Yes. | Its page says it highlights the AI-generated parts. Sentence level is not stated. | Its page says the checker tells you where matching content is located. |
| Grammarly | Yes, in a paid plan. | Yes. | The free detector shows one percentage. Its page says a paid AI Detector agent shows which parts may sound AI-generated. | Its page says the tool flags specific sentences and provides source references. |
| Originality.ai | Yes. | Yes. | Yes. Its home page lists sentence highlights. | Its page says a PDF report shows the most matched sources. Links are not stated. |
| QuillBot | Yes, with Premium. Up to 25,000 words a month. | Yes. | Not stated on the pages we read. | Not stated on the pages we read. |
| Scribbr | Yes, paid per document. | Yes. | Its page describes paragraph-level feedback. | Yes. A Sources Overview, and a side-by-side view of your text and the original. |
| ZeroGPT | Yes, after sign-up. | Yes. | Yes. Its home page says every sentence written by AI is highlighted. | Not stated on the pages we read. |
Prices and limits change. Before you pay for anything, read the maker’s own pricing page on the day you buy.
Why you cannot buy Turnitin yourself
Turnitin’s help centre has a page called Can I purchase an individual Turnitin license? The answer is no. It says Turnitin does not sell individual licenses or single-use subscriptions. Its similarity detection and grading services are sold only at the institutional level, to schools, universities and organizations.
The same page gives two routes:
- Ask your school. Turnitin says to check with your instructor, the university library or the IT help desk. They can tell you if the school has a licence and how you reach it. Some schools also have Turnitin Draft Coach. Turnitin’s Draft Coach FAQ says it is an add-on for Google Docs or Microsoft Word online, that it depends on the school’s licence, and that it does not store your draft in the Turnitin repository.
- iThenticate. Turnitin calls it a specialized alternative for individual access. On its site individuals buy credits. The listed price was $125 for a single manuscript of up to 25,000 words, or $300 for up to three. The page says the credits are for researchers, scholars and graduate students, and that AI writing detection is not available with them.
Be careful with websites that offer a “Turnitin report” to individuals. Turnitin says it does not sell individual access, so such an offer is not an official one. You also cannot see what happens to the paper you upload.
What an alternative can and cannot replace
Turnitin’s product page says it compares work with a repository of student papers, current and archived web pages, and subscription articles from publishers. The student papers are the part no other tool has.
| What you want | Can an independent tool do it? |
|---|---|
| Find text that matches web pages and publications | Yes. This is what a plagiarism checker does, within its own sources. |
| See which source each match came from | Often. Check the “Source links” column above. |
| Get a second opinion on AI-like text | Yes, as a likelihood. An AI score is not proof. |
| Match against papers other students submitted | No. Other tools cannot search Turnitin’s repository of student papers. |
| Predict your Turnitin similarity or AI percentage | No. No tool can do this. |
| Give your instructor the report inside the school’s system | No. That is what the school’s own checker is for. |
So use an independent check for one job: to find passages you forgot to quote or cite. Do not use it to chase a number. For how to read a result, see how to interpret a plagiarism report.
The eight tools
Ours first, then alphabetical. The order is not a ranking.
Plagiarism Checker Plus (ours)
Our plagiarism checker links every matching passage to its source. Our AI detector gives an overall score and a likelihood for every sentence. The first plagiarism check and the first AI check are free with no account, up to 1,000 words each. A free account includes 3,000 words a month. Paid plans add longer documents, folders and API access. There is also a grammar checker, a citation generator (APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, AMA, ACS), a Google Docs add-on, a Chrome extension and a REST API.
Its limits:
- It has no database of other students’ submitted papers.
- It does not connect to a school system or learning platform.
- We publish no accuracy figure.
- The free check stops at 1,000 words. A longer paper needs an account or a paid plan.
Copyleaks
Copyleaks’ pricing page lists a Personal plan at $16.99 a month, or $13.99 a month billed yearly at $167.88. It says one credit covers up to 250 words, and that plans scan for AI and plagiarism in a single report. Its plagiarism checker page says you can try the checker free by registering, and that the report includes web page links. Its AI detector page says you can scan up to 25,000 characters free, and that sentence-by-sentence insights come with a free account. The pricing page also has an Education plan with LMS integrations, priced for institutions.
Duplichecker
Duplichecker’s home page has a free plagiarism checker. The box showed a 10,000-character counter when we read it, and the page says the tool does not ask for registration. Several settings are marked Pro. Its pricing page lists a Basic plan at $9.99 a month for 100 searches and 30,000 words. Its AI detector page says the detector is free, needs no sign-up and highlights the AI-generated parts. The box there showed a 2,000-word counter.
Grammarly
Grammarly’s plagiarism checker page says the tool compares your text with web pages and ProQuest’s academic databases, flags specific sentences, provides source references and gives an originality score. Its plans page lists detecting plagiarism and AI-generated text as features of a paid plan. Its AI detector page has a free detector that shows what percentage of the text appears to be AI-generated. The plans page showed us a local currency, so check their site for the price where you live.
Originality.ai
Originality.ai’s pricing page lists a free plan with AI detection only: 3 scans a day, up to 2,000 words a scan. Its home page says you can run those free scans without an account, and lists sentence highlights. The Pro plan is $14.95 a month, or $12.95 a month billed yearly, with 2,000 credits a month. One credit covers 100 words, and a scan for both AI and plagiarism uses two credits per 100 words. Its plagiarism checker page also offers a free plagiarism check. The limit of that free check is not stated.
QuillBot (plagiarism checker and AI detector only)
QuillBot’s help centre says the plagiarism checker is not on the free plan. With Premium you can check up to 25,000 words a month, and you can buy more words, from $2.45 for 6,250 words. It says the AI Detector is free for all users. It also says the Premium price depends on your region, so we list no price. We could not open QuillBot’s product pages, so these facts come from its help centre only. This page does not cover QuillBot’s other tools.
Scribbr
Scribbr’s plagiarism checker page charges per document, not by subscription: $19.95 up to 7,499 words, $29.95 for 7,500 to 49,999 words and $39.95 for 50,000 words or more. The page describes a Sources Overview and a side-by-side comparison with the original text. It also says universities may check your work against private student paper databases that Scribbr cannot access. Its AI Detector page says the detector is free, with unlimited checks of up to 1,200 words each and no sign-up.
ZeroGPT
ZeroGPT’s home page has an AI detector. The box showed a 15,000-character counter, and the page says every sentence written by AI is highlighted. Its plagiarism checker page asks you to sign up first, and says the report highlights similar text and shows a similarity percentage. Its pricing page shows a free plan at $0 with sign-up, and names Personal plans and Business and EDU plans. We could not read the paid prices on that page, so check their site.
For teachers at a school without a licence
A teacher is in the same position as a student here. You cannot buy Turnitin for one class. You have two kinds of options.
- A tool you use yourself. Any tool in the tables works for checking one paper at a time. Look at the word limits first. A class set of essays adds up fast.
- A tool your school buys. Some makers sell to institutions too. Copyleaks’ pricing page lists an Education plan with LMS integrations. Originality.ai’s site lists a Moodle plugin. Plagiarism Checker Plus does not connect to an LMS.
Whatever you use, a score is a reason to look closer. It is not a verdict. See how to detect plagiarism in student essays and our page for teachers.
How to choose
Ask these questions in this order.
- Does my school have Turnitin or another checker? If yes, start there. Ask if you may submit a draft, or if the school offers Draft Coach.
- How long is my paper? Count the words. Compare that with the free allowance and with the plan you are thinking of buying. For one long paper, a per-document price may cost less than a subscription.
- Do I need the sources linked? A percentage alone does not tell you what to fix. A link to each source lets you read the original and decide whether to quote, paraphrase or cite.
- Do I need an AI check too? A plagiarism check does not cover a course AI policy. If you want an AI check, a result for each sentence tells you more than one number.
- Do I want to sign up? The “Sign-up needed” column shows which tools work without an account.
- What happens to my text? Read each tool’s privacy policy before you upload. Look for whether your paper is stored, whether it is added to a database, and whether it is used to train AI. We did not review other tools’ policies.
For a wider look at checkers for students, see plagiarism checkers for students. For a direct comparison, see Plagiarism Checker Plus vs Turnitin.
What we do not know and did not test
- Accuracy. We did not run the same papers through each tool. We do not know which tool finds more matches or which AI detector is right more often. Some makers state accuracy figures on their sites. We did not test them and do not repeat them here.
- How any result compares with Turnitin. We have no access to Turnitin and did not compare results.
- What each free check really shows. We read the makers’ pages. We did not sign up for each tool and run a paper through it.
- Prices we could not read. Grammarly’s plans page showed a local currency. QuillBot says its price depends on region. ZeroGPT’s paid prices did not load in the page we read.
- QuillBot’s product pages. We could not open them, so we used its help centre.
- Other checkers. There are more tools than these eight. Leaving one out is not a judgement about it.
We also have an interest here: we would like you to try our tool. That is why our own limits are listed above, and why we do not name a winner.
Sources
Each maker’s own website, read on 10 October 2026.
- Turnitin: Can I purchase an individual Turnitin license?, Turnitin Similarity, Draft Coach FAQ and iThenticate.
- Copyleaks: pricing, plagiarism checker and AI detector.
- Duplichecker: home page, pricing and AI detector.
- Grammarly: plagiarism checker, AI detector and plans.
- Originality.ai: pricing, home page and plagiarism checker.
- QuillBot help centre: free and Premium plans for the plagiarism checker, buying more words, AI Detector and Premium price.
- Scribbr: plagiarism checker and AI Detector.
- ZeroGPT: home page, plagiarism checker and pricing.
- Plagiarism Checker Plus: our own plagiarism checker, AI detector and pricing pages.