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Merlin AI is an online plagiarism detection platform designed for students and content professionals to quickly verify the authenticity of their content.
In addition to plagiarism detection, one of Merlin’s popular features is AI Chat, which can be used to generate AI articles. Read our Merlin AI Review to learn more about its AI article generation capabilities.
For the purposes of this review, we wanted to focus specifically on the plagiarism detection feature to see how the free Merlin Plagiarism Checker compares to the industry-leading Originality.ai Plagiarism Detector; particularly when it comes to direct plagiarism (copy and paste) and patchwork plagiarism.
Our at-a-glance rating is below:
We tested the Merlin plagiarism checker comparatively with the Originality.ai Plagiarism Checker in four different plagiarism tests. See the full results below.
Merlin is a free online plagiarism checker and platform with AI tools. Its free plagiarism checker is designed to quickly check for plagiarism by comparing the pasted or uploaded text to a database. It also notes that it uses advanced algorithms for text analysis and pattern recognition.
In the free version of the tool, it states whether or not plagiarism was found (without a specific percentage). It also provides a breakdown of individual details of the pasted text into the number of words, sentences, and paragraphs.
Merlin’s plagiarism checker is designed for a range of different use cases including:
Merlin’s plagiarism checker is free to use for the first three plagiarism checks (it provides 3 free initial credits to run a scan).
After this time, the platform encourages users to upgrade. Check out the chart below for a quick overview of the plans that Merlin offers:
Upgrading to a premium plan does come with a usage limitation. Specifically, it notes that “extreme usage may result in account restriction.”
For this test, we focused exclusively on Merlin’s plagiarism checker.
We divided the test into two parts:
Step 1: First, we took two blog posts from the Originality.ai blog.
Step 2: Next, we pasted the blog content directly into the Originality.ai plagiarism checker and into Merlin’s plagiarism checker and then ran each respective tool, documenting the results.
We chose text samples directly from the Originality.ai blog:
Step 3: For the second part of the test, we chose examples of patchwork plagiarism. Patchwork plagiarism is an example of plagiarism that, due to the fact that it pulls from numerous sources, is typically harder for many plagiarism detectors to identify.
Step 4: We then ran both samples through Merlin and the Originality.ai Plagiarism Checker to compare results.
Unlike the Originality.ai plagiarism checker, which gives a specific percentage of plagiarism found, the free version of the Merlin plagiarism checker only lets the user know if plagiarism was found or not (with no highlighting and no percentage of plagiarized content detected).
Note: Interestingly, during our test, although we used the exact same text and ran it through both the Originality.ai Plagiarism Checker and the Merlin Plagiarism Checker, Merlin sometimes noted a slightly different word count.
Originality.ai Plagiarism Checker: 100% Match
Merlin Plagiarism Checker: No plagiarism detected.
Originality.ai Plagiarism Checker 100% Match
Merlin Plagiarism Checker: No plagiarism detected.
Originality.ai Plagiarism Checker: 65% Match
Merlin Plagiarism Checker: No plagiarism detected.
Originality.ai Plagiarism Checker: 89% Match
Merlin Plagiarism Checker: Plagiarism found.
During the plagiarism testing, Merlin failed to spot direct copy-and-paste plagiarism in the two blog examples it was given. In both instances, it noted “No plagiarism found.”
It also failed to spot patchwork plagiarism in the first example that we tested.
It did, however, state “Plagiarism found,” in the second patchwork plagiarism test.
A limitation of the Merlin Plagiarism Checker was that the free version of the tool didn’t specify a particular percentage when plagiarism was found. This could make it difficult for users to identify whether the tool picked up on a quote, patchwork plagiarism throughout an article, or if the entire work was plagiarized.
In comparison, the Originality.ai Plagiarism Checker was consistently able to find both direct plagiarism and patchwork plagiarism in the tested examples. The Originality.ai plagiarism checker also provides a clear Match score so that users can identify how much of the text is flagged as matching.
With these results, it’s clear that more testing will need to be done on the Merlin plagiarism checker.
The Originality.ai Plagiarism Checker is designed for content professionals and is exceptionally accurate when it comes to checking both direct copy-and-paste plagiarism and patchwork plagiarism among other types.
Originality.ai’s plagiarism checker also generates a complete report with highlighted instances of potential plagiarism and sources, helping content professionals quickly make changes and make sure their citations are correct.
Learn more about the accuracy of Originality.ai’s plagiarism checker in our comparative Copyscape Plagiarism Checker and Grammarly Plagiarism Checker reviews.
Merlin’s plagiarism checker was unable to consistently detect either verbatim copy-paste plagiarism or patchwork plagiarism when we tested it, with only one of the four tests showing any plagiarism found.
This means that if you’re considering using Merlin as a plagiarism checker, it’s a good idea to conduct your own independent tests and verify the results for yourself.
For a more reliable plagiarism checker that handles both direct and patchwork plagiarism as well as many other types of plagiarism, consider the Originality.ai plagiarism checker. Plus, with Originality.ai you get a suite of best-in-class content quality tools including our AI Checker, Grammar Checker, and Fact Checker.
Read more plagiarism checker reviews:
Merlin’s plagiarism checker lets users upload or copy and paste text directly into its plagiarism checker, with a limit of 10,000 characters. This gives users the flexibility to check academic papers, essays, and blog posts alike.
Merlin offers a number of AI tools, including a YouTube and article summarizer, Merlin AI chat, essay writers and more.
Given the results of the plagiarism checker, if you plan on using any of these tools, it’s a good idea to do your own independent checks to verify the output that Merlin provides.
