Plagiarism
8 Popular Citation Checkers to Prevent Plagiarism
The best citation checkers and plagiarism scanners ranked, plus review the pros and cons of popular citation and plagiarism tools.
Whether you’re a content creator, marketer, or web publisher, you know how important it is to have your work properly cited.
Not only does checking citations help prevent plagiarism, but it also helps safeguard reputation and credibility. You don’t want to inadvertently borrow from another expert in your field and forget to cite their work.
Enter citation checkers and plagiarism scanners. These tools can help review that work is not only properly cited but also free from plagiarism (or duplicate content) and authentically your own.
The question then becomes, which one is the best? Read on for our detailed citation checker reviews, plus the pros and cons of many popular plagiarism detectors.
Originality.ai offers an industry-leading plagiarism checker designed for content creators and web publishers.
When it comes to citations, the Originality.ai plagiarism checker is a fantastic choice for reviewing quotes in a piece of content.
If the content is quoting an article that’s published online in Google search results, the plagiarism checker will highlight similar text. Then, you can review highlights to make sure quotes are appropriately cited.
Additionally, part of what makes Originality.ai’s platform stand out is that it also checks for AI-generated text.
The Originality.ai AI checker highlights areas that are likely AI-generated, so you can carefully review potential instances of AI content to avoid AI hallucinations or duplicate content.
One of the web’s most popular grammar and spelling checkers, Grammarly offers an additional plagiarism-checking service. Its plagiarism scanner works by comparing your work to billions of web pages.
It also offers ‘Citation suggestions’ and suggests modifications for citations based on specific citation style guides like MLA or APA.
Read our insightful Grammarly plagiarism review and Grammarly AI detector review to learn more about Grammarly.
Copyscape was originally designed for website content creators to see if their content had been copied elsewhere on the web.
These days, it’s still used for that purpose, although it has branched out a bit to include plagiarism detection and duplicate content checking to help prevent SEO ranking issues.
It’s worth noting that Copyscape is designed to scan and report back on duplicate web page content, so to use the tool to review citations, you need to check for duplicate content.
Read our detailed Copyscape review for more information on how it works.
One of the most popular plagiarism checkers, Turnitin, checks for ‘similarity,’ which can help you identify areas that need proper citations. It uses a vast database of sources, including academic articles, web pages, and student-submitted essays.
Because of its integration with LMS (learning management systems) in schools and universities, using Turnitin is often a requirement for students before turning in their papers.
Many who use Turnitin do so because it’s available through their school or university. Read our detailed Turnitin Review for more information.
Unicheck was a plagiarism detection platform offered by Turnitin. However, as of December 2023, it was discontinued.
True to its name, Plagscan analyzes documents to uncover any instances of plagiarism across academic papers (such as scientific journals) and online websites.
It highlights potential plagiarism as well as citations. However, its interface is somewhat overwhelming and not intuitive.
Compared to other plagiarism scanners and citation checkers in this roundup, PlagScan is unnecessarily complex and includes quite a learning curve if you’re planning to use it as a citation checker or plagiarism scanner.
Additionally, it is also worth noting that it is powered by Turnitin as noted on the site’s homepage.
Scribbr offers a plagiarism checker in partnership with Turnitin, as well as, a citation checker, and citation generator. So, it provides a number of tools for reviewing citations.
However, its AI citation checker is limited to APA-style citations unless you upgrade to their ‘Hire a Citation Expert’ feature at a cost of $2.75 per source.
So, if you need to scan for plagiarism or citations with different style guides on a large amount of documents, Scribbr may not be the best option.
ProWritingAid is less of a dedicated plagiarism scanner and more of an all-in-one platform designed for writers.
It suggests corrections on writing style, grammar, and more. It also includes a plagiarism scanner, but this service is provided for an extra fee. For reviewing citations, it advises it can help users identify potential plagiarism where they need to add citations.
Quetex can highlight text that’s potentially plagiarized. It also helps students and researchers properly format their citations through its citation generator.
However, although it has a free version (for scans of up to 500 words), its features are limited. To access more features, it offers a premium version.
Learn more about what Quetext can and cannot do and how it stacks up to the competition with our detailed Quetext plagiarism checker review.
Additionally, Quetext also offers AI detection. Read our review of Quetext’s AI detector.
Incorporating a plagiarism checker or citation checker into your editing workflow is a helpful way to review your work and ensure it’s uniquely your own. It’s also an excellent way to review quotes in your text and make sure that you’re accurately citing works, so that you can continue to publish with integrity.
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