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Plagiarism

Grammarly Plagiarism Checker Review

Searching for a plagiarism checker? Read our review of the Grammarly Plagiarism Checker and how it compares to the alternatives.

If you are an avid follower of this blog, you’ll know we often talk about the importance of transparency in the future of digital content.

With more and more people using AI content creation tools, and an ever-increasing amount of content getting published online, the chances of plagiarism occurring is also on the rise.

Simultaneously, the trust readers have in what they are consuming is also dropping.

The only way to resolve this issue is by providing readers with transparency, which can be done by using an effective and accurate plagiarism checker.

Here, we’ll review one of the most used tools in this space, the Grammarly Plagiarism Checker, to see whether or not it is a checker you can rely on, or one you should avoid.

Key Takeaways (TL;DR)

  • Originality.ai outperforms Grammarly in Global plagiarism detection.
    • At the 15% threshold (Originality.ai 86% vs. Grammarly 80.3%). 
    • However, at the 5% threshold, Grammarly shows strong performance (Originality.ai 88% vs. Grammarly 93%).
  • Originality.ai is significantly better at identifying Paraphrase plagiarism.
    • At the 15% threshold (Originality.ai 27.62% vs. Grammarly 3%).
    • At the 5% threshold (Originality.ai 34.7% vs. Grammarly 14%).
  • Originality.ai has a notable lead in identifying Patchwork plagiarism.
    • At the 15% threshold (Originality.ai 43.5% vs. Grammarly 43%).
    • At the 5% threshold (Originality.ai 65% vs. Grammarly 51%).

Grammarly Plagiarism Checker Quick Review

  • Ease of use - 8/10
  • Features - 6/10
  • Customer Support - 7/10
  • Price - 8/10
  • Speed - 8/10
  • Performance - 6/10
  • Summary - 7/10

In brief, while the Grammarly grammar checker tool is right up there with the very best, their plagiarism checker isn’t quite as good.

While it certainly is a solid option, and better than many tools on offer, it isn’t quite as effective as some of the market-leaders, such as Originality.ai.

What Is The Grammarly Plagiarism Checker?

Since its inception, Grammarly has rapidly grown in popularity, quickly becoming one of the most popular tools for checking and improving grammar. 

The results are quick, the built-in Chrome Extension is easy to manage, and the results have allowed many users to ensure their work is grammar-free and of the highest quality.

Since then, Grammarly has opted to explore other elements of online content creation, most recently publishing the Grammarly AI detector.

Among their ventures is a plagiarism checker, which is designed to help users identify any potential forms of plagiarism, whether intentional or not.

Why are people interested in Grammarly’s Plagiarism Checker?

Having the ability to check for plagiarism has become absolutely essential in our digitally-focused everyday life.

With more and more concerns over the credibility of what people read online and general trust online at an all-time low, it is absolutely crucial that what you post on your website or submit as your own work, is 100% legitimate.

Plagiarism detectors can help achieve this, either allowing you to check the work of others or check your own before submission.

Given the fact that Grammarly has become a household (and reliable) name for grammar checking, it’s no surprise that they have also garnered significant interest in their plagiarism tool.

Who Is the Grammarly Plagiarism Checker Best for?

Grammarly’s plagiarism checker is a great solution for both writers and reviewers of all formats of content, allowing people to gain more transparency in what is getting submitted or published.

Content marketers

Content marketers can greatly benefit from using a tool like Grammarly’s Plagiarism Checker. Whether it’s work they’ve created themselves or work that has come in from a freelance writer, using a plagiarism checker is a great way to maintain the authenticity and quality of the content on your website.

Freelancers

Equally, freelancers can also benefit from using a plagiarism checker like Grammarly’s offering, as this allows them to prove that the content they have produced is legitimate and their own.

Not only does it provide their clients with peace of mind, but it is also a professional and proactive approach to plagiarism detection, which can only improve client relations.

Academics

Last but not least, students and academics can also benefit from using a plagiarism tool like this. Students can use it to give them confidence that they aren’t going to run into any issues with the work they have submitted, and academics can use it to ensure that students aren’t attempting to pass off other people's work as their own, either accidentally or intentionally.

How to Use the Grammarly Plagiarism Checker Effectively

To get the most out of the Grammarly Plagiarism Checker, you can either paste your text into the tool, or upload your chosen file if it is a Word doc or PDF.

Once done, you can press the “Scan for Plagiarism” button to start the process. The platform will then take you to a standard Grammarly page, and you’ll need to click the “Check for Plagiarism and AI” button in the bottom right-hand corner.

The tool will then highlight any potential matches with other documents and flag them as plagiarism. However, unlike Copyscape, the tool shows you all matches, regardless of how minimal they are.

Copyscape will only show results that are more than a certain percentage match, but that isn’t the case with Grammarly.

For example, we pasted this article into the platform, and immediately this was flagged: 

How Much Does It Cost?

While the basic version of the Grammarly tool is free, the plagiarism scanner is not included in this subscription type. Instead, you will need to purchase a Premium, Business, or Enterprise plan.

The Pro Plan - $12 per month (yearly plan)

  • Everything included in the Free Plan
  • Catch accidental plagiarism
  • Rewrite full sentences
  • Adjust your writing tone
  • Write fluently in English

The Business Plan - $15 per month (yearly plan)

  • Everything included in the Pro Plan
  • Catch accidental plagiarism
  • Stay on-brand
  • Analytics dashboard
  • Generate text with 2,000 AI prompts

The Enterprise Plan - Contact sales for pricing

  • Everything included in Pro
  • Dedicated support
  • Enhanced security, privacy, and governance
  • Unlimited generative AI prompts

Alternatives to the Grammarly Plagiarism Checker 

While the Grammarly Plagiarism Checker is a popular choice, it is not the only option available to you.

Infact, there are several other plagiarism tools you could consider, such as the Originality.ai plagiarism checker or Copyscape.

The Originality.ai plagiarism checker is also an industry-leader and a necessity for anyone who is publishing content online, submitting, or reviewing academic content.

Read more about Originality.ai for educators.

Our Plagiarism Tool Test

With all that in mind, we decided to put the Grammarly Plagiarism Checker to the test as part of a wider research piece, comparing it to various other popular plagiarism detection solutions.

As with any research we undertake, the information below is from detailed and unbiased testing, running the same content through each tool to get the fairest possible results.

Our recent study evaluated the effectiveness of popular plagiarism detection tools — Copyscape and Grammarly — with Originality.ai, our unique offering. 

We explored their key features, results, user experience, pricing, and performance in plagiarism detection.

To ensure a fair comparison, we selected a standardized set of texts with varying degrees of originality, paraphrasing, and plagiarism. 

Dataset

  • Total 600 Text Samples:
    • Each sample of under 2500 words
    • 200 samples from each type of plagiarism mentioned below.
  • 3 Types of plagiarism in the selected dataset and its source:
    • Global Plagiarism: 

         PAN Plagiarism Corpus 2011 (PAN-PC-11) 

          Source: https://zenodo.org/records/3250095

  • Paraphrase Plagiarism:

         Identifying Machine-Paraphrased Plagiarism

          Source: https://zenodo.org/records/3608000

  • Patchwork Plagiarism:

          PAN14 Originality - Text Alignment

          Source: https://zenodo.org/records/3716022

The evaluation criteria

We tested each tool using the same evaluation criteria stated below:

  • Sensitivity (True Positive Rate): The percentage of the time the detector identifies plagiarism correctly.
  • Accuracy: The percentage of the detector’s predictions that were correct
  • F1 Score: The harmonic mean of Specificity and Precision, often used as an agglomerating metric when ranking the performance of multiple detectors.

The threshold

We compared these tools at the threshold of 3%, 5%, and 15%.

Threshold: The predetermined percentage of content similarity at which a text will be flagged as plagiarised.

For example, a 15% threshold indicates that if a document has more than 15% matching content from other sources, it will be considered as potentially plagiarised.

Originality.ai vs. Grammarly

Review a comparison of the Originality.ai Plagiarism Checker specifically to Grammarly. The review includes an analysis of plagiarism detection performance in types of plagiarism that include: global, paraphrase, and patchwork plagiarism.

The results clearly show that while Grammarly’s Plagiarism Checker is reliable on a global scale, it struggles to match the Originality.ai Plagiarism Checker in other areas, most notably in paraphrase plagiarism.

Results overview

  • Global plagiarism: At the 15% threshold, Originality.ai (86%) outperforms Grammarly (80.3%). At the 5% threshold, Grammarly (93%) surpasses Originality.ai (88%).
  • Paraphrase plagiarism: Originality.ai is significantly better at both thresholds — 27.62% (15% threshold) and 34.7% (5% threshold) compared to Grammarly’s 3% and 14%.
  • Patchwork plagiarism: Originality.ai has a slight edge at 15% (43.5% vs 43%) and a notable lead at 5% (65% vs 51%).

User experience

Comparison Table
Originality.ai Grammarly
  • User-friendly interface, real-time feedback
  • Easy upload of content via multiple methods (URL, document upload, copy-paste)
  • Detailed plagiarism reports with shareable links
  • Paraphrasing detection for more nuanced forms of plagiarism
  • Provides AI-generated content detection with high accuracy
  • Seamless integration with writing tools (e.g., Word, Google Docs)
  • Real-time plagiarism checks along with editing and grammar-checks

Pricing

Pricing Table
Originality.ai Grammarly
  • Pay As You Go: $60 one-time payment for 6,000 credits (2-year expiry)
  • Pro Plan: $14.95/month for 1,000 credits (monthly renewals)
  • Enterprise Plan: $136.58/month for 15,000 credits with API access
  • Free version limited to 10 scans and 500 words
  • $12/month (billed annually) for Premium subscription
  • $15/month (billed annually) for Business subscription
  • No pay-per-use option
  • No plagiarism detection in free plan

Key features

Key Features Table
Originality.ai Grammarly
  • Detects complex plagiarism forms like patchwork and mosaic plagiarism
  • Very intuitive similarity score for user content compared to plagiarized sources
  • Identifies AI-generated content from various sources
  • Multilingual plagiarism detection
  • Detailed Scan History and Shareable Reports
  • Readability Checker & Fact Checker
  • Plagiarism detection with ProQuest integration
  • Grammar and writing improvement tools
  • Real-time results

Analysis

Scan Time

For scanning 1000-1500 words using API Endpoints:

  • Originality.ai: 20-30 seconds
  • Grammarly: 15-30 seconds (API not available)

Grammarly is useful for writers needing an all-in-one tool, but Originality.ai is more specialized, providing a more comprehensive plagiarism detection experience.

Originality.ai Grammarly
  • Strong for global plagiarism (86%) and patchwork detection (43.5%), with decent paraphrase detection (27.62%)
  • Ideal for content creators, educators, and publishers who need both plagiarism detection and AI content analysis
  • Strong capabilities in detecting both traditional and subtle plagiarism, making it ideal for academic and journalistic use
  • Provides real-time content quality assessment with readability and fact-checking tools
  • Its AI detector that has the ability to detect AI-generated content with 98% accuracy makes it stand out among competitors, especially for professional publishers concerned with content fraud
  • Good for global plagiarism detection (80.3%) and effective for patchwork plagiarism (43%), but very weak at detecting paraphrased content (3%)
  • Best for writers needing both grammar improvement and basic plagiarism checks
  • Not as detailed for academic checks where paraphrasing is done

Pros

Originality.ai Grammarly
  • High accuracy in detecting both AI-generated content and plagiarism
  • User-friendly interface
  • Offers multiple features like readability check, fact check, and paraphrasing detection
  • Shareable and detailed plagiarism reports
  • Pay-as-you-go pricing option for flexibility
  • Flexible pricing – buy a subscription or credits
  • Budget-friendly prices
  • A great number of basic features
  • Accessible website
  • Offers a language and citation assistant
  • Offers rewriting suggestions to decrease plagiarism
  • Catches even common phrases

Cons

Comparison Table
Originality.ai Grammarly
  • API access is only available in the enterprise plan
  • The Pay-as-You-Go plan lacks features like team management, full site scans, and scan from URL
  • Can be inaccurate when checking human content (learn more about false positives)
  • Doesn’t offer a full free version to test all its capabilities
  • No free plans for plagiarism detection
  • Not reliable for edited or paraphrased texts
  • No API for Plagiarism Checker

Thanks to the advanced AI-driven algorithms it uses, the Originality.ai tool is fantastic at detecting all forms of plagiarism in content, including even the most subtle iterations.

Check out the Originality.ai Plagiarism Checker here!

Further Reading on Grammarly

Frequently Asked Questions About The Grammarly Plagiarism Checker

Is Grammarly’s Plagiarism Checker accurate?

The Grammarly Plagiarism Checker is relatively accurate compared to alternative options but not as accurate as some industry-leaders, such as the Originality.ai Plagiarism Checker.

Is Grammarly’s Plagiarism Checker free?

Unfortunately, you can’t use the Grammarly Plagiarism Checker without a Pro, Business, or Enterprise Account.

What sources does Grammarly’s Plagiarism Checker check?

Grammarly’s plagiarism checker scours billions of online sources to identify any potential matches. These sources include academic studies, books, and web pages.

Graeme

My name is Graeme, a passionate writer with a strong Content Marketing background. Over the last seven years, I have developed an extensive portfolio of SEO Content writing, helping various brands improve their organic traffic, customer experience, and, ultimately, profits!

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