10 Best Plagiarism Checkers for Freelance Writers

No one likes stolen content. It’s theft of the author’s intellectual property. But it’s also something that many people commit involuntarily, most of the time due to disinformation. But don’t worry! In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best free and paid plagiarism checkers for freelance writers to help you detect the degree of originality in your writing.

Why Do Freelance Writers Need Plagiarism Checkers?

Actually, it is quite easy to make mistakes. If you write an article based on another author and don’t quote it correctly or don’t leave a record of the author’s property, that’s plagiarism.

You need to make sure you’re not taking other people’s ideas while documenting, researching, and developing a topic. Always give the appropriate attribution to the authors your research focused on. Even when you’re recycling your own content, it may be considered self-plagiarism if you’re not citing the sources.

In addition, beyond the ethical issue, it’s harmful to plagiarize because search engines will penalize your website for this practice. When it comes to the internet, posting duplicate content on multiple sites hurts your overall SEO efforts, Google will punish your site, and it won’t appear in the SERPs.

In fact, plagiarism affects your SEO in the following ways:

• When targeting link metrics (authority, reliability, anchor text, etc.) search engines cannot determine if the information is on a single page or multiple pages.
• When ranking search results, engines have trouble deciding which entry is the most relevant.
• The indexing of your website is compromised because engines lose time searching for duplicate pages, articles or blogs.
• If you’re accused of being a repeat offender in copying intellectual material, your site could be reported for content plagiarism and removed from organic results.

As a consequence, it’s important to avoid plagiarism in all forms. Writers should routinely use online plagiarism checkers before submitting their work. Good plagiarism checkers like the ones below should be part of every writer’s and editor’s workflow.

1. Copyscape

Copyscape is a popular online plagiarism checker that many writers use to make sure that their own writing is original as well as to see if their content is being duplicated elsewhere on the internet.

Particularly, it searches the web for similar content. You just have to enter the URL of the page containing the content you want to check, and it will show you similarities. If you follow one of the suggested links, you’ll see which part of the text matches and be able to determine if it is plagiarism or not.

If you need more options like uploading text from a Microsoft Word file or PDF, there are paid options to choose from too.

2. Grammarly

Grammarly is known for its writing improvement and proofreading tools, but it also has a plagiarism checker feature, which is also useful for writers.

It has a simple interface and is effective for detecting plagiarism as it compares your texts to over eight billion web pages. If you want to check if a certain piece of text is plagiarized, simply copy and paste the text onto the website, and that’s it! The best thing? While you’re on the site, you can also use one of Grammarly’s other services like its spelling and grammar check.

The downsides are that Grammarly is only available in English, and its plagiarism checker is a paid service that only detects plagiarism if it originates from sources on the internet. This means it won’t compare your text with books and libraries, like our next tool does.

3. Turnitin

Turnitin is a tool with many functionalities for academic writers but it works for other types of writer too.

This tool is more potent than Copyscape and Grammarly as it takes into account books and libraries, so it is probably the most complete plagiarism detection software.

It has an extensive database and functionality called “Grade Mark”, which includes comments on the documents. The downside to Turnitin is that you can only have access to it if you’re a student or professor.

4. Plagiarism Checker X

Plagiarism Checker X is software built to review millions of web pages, publications, books, and articles. It works great for content writers and independent content creators who need to check content before uploading it. In fact, its algorithm detects duplicated content around the web then highlights the plagiarized words or phrases so you know which parts of your text to edit to improve the percentage of originality.

Following this, Plagiarism Checker X allows you to download a report or originality results in different formats such as Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF.

With a free license, you’ll have enough functionalities but a maximum of 30 scans daily. On the other hand, if you get the paid version, you’ll have no word limit and unlimited scans. However, the free version is good enough if you don’t have too much text to check.

5. DupliChecker

DupliChecker is a free and effective tool to detect the existence of duplicate content by copying and pasting a text fragment of up to 1000 words per search. It also offers the option of uploading files in other formats such as Word, PDF or ODT.

If you want to make one quick search, this tool is perfect. Just enter your text and scan it. But if you think you might need to frequently check for plagiarized content, it might not be the right tool as every scan is limited to 1000 words.

On the other hand, the number of tools provided by DupliChecker is really impressive, and the best part is that you can use them directly without any payment. Some of its features include image tools, SEO, IP tools, file converters, and even password generators.

However, its algorithms are not strong enough to catch all possible plagiarism and you have to consider this weakness. Compared to Plagiarism Checker X or Grammarly, it will skip some plagiarized content.

6. PlagScan

PlagScan is a solid choice for analyzing your text against plagiarism and it is used by many writers globally to track their content online. It is also useful for academic writers because academic institutions and enterprises use it regularly.

It has a freemium model (some functionalities are free and premium services are paid). With its free version, you get 2000 words free, which is normally enough to check a blog post, but if you need to check a book, you’re better of getting one of their plans. For instance, if you decide to pay for the private plan to check the originality percentage of your dissertation, you can scan up to 100,000 words (about 400 pages) for $49.99.

By the way, it works with the most popular formats such as PDF or Microsoft Word. You just have to drag and drop your document and PlagScan will analyze it and send you a report.

7. Plagramme

Similar to Turnitin, Plagramme helps mainly academic writers and students but its key features are also helpful for other writers too:

• Creates detailed and downloadable reports after checking extensive databases to show you the originality of your work.
• Operates with a free trial and premium service.
• Has a responsive customer service department.
• Allows users to download reports in DOCX format to learn from their mistakes and correct the duplicated content.

In short, this tool is useful if your content is mainly academic. In addition, it’s much more accessible than Turnitin and its features are good no matter what industry you write for.

8. Quetext

Quetext is a leading plagiarism checker for freelance writers. Its algorithm helps you detect duplicated content not only by the similarity of words but also by the context of the sentences. So, this tool can detect plagiarism even if some of the texts have been modified.

Simply register and enter the text to get a report on the plagiarized parts of the document. However, searches in the free version are limited to 2500 words, while in the premium service they are unlimited.

As this tool is able to analyze the context of the texts, you’ll have peace of mind as it detects plagiarism that other tools can’t. But, you have to analyze the results carefully because it can also extract text that’s not necessarily plagiarized.

Another nice feature of Quetext is that you will be able to do a grammar check thanks to its integration with Grammarly.

9. Viper

Viper is a tool with an easy-to-use interface and a good scanning process to review documents and produce a complete anti-plagiarism report. Additionally, it is available in English and Spanish.

It has a pay-as-you-go model, where $5 is the minimum amount you have to pay to check up to 5000 words. Just buy the credits you need and use them to scan your documents against essays, newspapers, magazines, and numerous other sources on the internet.

Best of all, there are no delays… you’ll get your report in seconds. In fact, you’ll receive a clear and concise anti-plagiarism report, which will point out precisely the text in your document that contains duplicated content.

If you’re a writer who has a regular need to check for plagiarism, paying for each project is perhaps not the best idea, so checking out one of the other tools would be a better long-term investment.

10. Unicheck

Unicheck is an online plagiarism checker for freelance writers that verifies the authenticity of texts or documents by providing a detailed similarity report. It quickly checks similarities on the web, as well as in databases, journals, and documents.

Its main features are:

• Supports 99 percent of text formats.
• Supports several languages such as English, Spanish, German, and French.
• Has a visually attractive layout and highlights the matching fragments in yellow.
• Detects quotes and lists of references, and excludes these from the check.

Despite its benefits, it doesn’t stand out compared to other plagiarism checkers with similar characteristics. The only difference from the other plagiarism detectors mentioned above is that Unicheck charges about $5 per page.

Bonus: Google Search Engine

For short texts or phrases, you can use the Google search engine to look for existing content on the internet. This is probably the most basic resource for detecting plagiarism. For example, if you believe someone else is using your content, you can just copy and paste it in the Google search bar and see if it gets any results.

It’s not the most elegant way to check for plagiarism on the internet. However, to check for content quickly, it is useful as long as this content is quite short and generates reasonable doubts.

Ready to Start Using the Best Plagiarism Checkers Online?

With these plagiarism checkers, you’ll have peace of mind and get stronger SEO abilities to rank higher in Google searches.

However, it’s best not to rely only on free plagiarism tools because they may miss some results. Before deciding how much you want one of these tools to be part of your own writing process, try each one out until you find the one that works best for your needs.

Originally published at https://jenniferberube.com on November 25, 2020.