As a student, you will likely need a plagiarism checker at some point during your academic journey; to analyze your thesis, dissertation, or internship report, detect plagiarism, and correct misquoted sources and references.

It’s often difficult to choose the best plagiarism checker to analyze your assignments due to the numerous options available on the market.

In this article, we explain the main criteria to consider when identifying the best anti-plagiarism software for students.

Table of Contents:

Why check and detect plagiarism?
What to do after detecting plagiarism?
What makes a good plagiarism checker?
What are the main criteria to consider when choosing the best plagiarism checker?
Free anti-plagiarism software: why should you be cautious?
How to access the Compilatio Studium plagiarism checker for free?

1. Why Check and Detect Plagiarism?

Checking for plagiarism in a thesis, dissertation, internship report, or any other synthesis document is an important step to ensure the originality of the work.

When writing an assignment, you consult various sources (official documents, academic papers, websites…) to gather information, understand concepts, or simply seek inspiration. In academic terminology, this phase is called "literature research."

Literature research allows you to collect all the necessary data and information to address a subject effectively and produce quality work.

During your research, it's likely that you will incorporate elements from the sources you’ve consulted into your work, sometimes without realizing it. Therefore, it’s important to analyze your thesis, dissertation, or internship report with a plagiarism checker to submit your work confidently.

2. What to Do After Detecting Plagiarism?

You’ve analyzed your assignment using plagiarism detection software and found plagiarism—what should you do?

➡️ Next step: Correct misquoted sources.

Your plagiarism checker provides the similarity rate between your document and various sources on the internet or within the software’s database.

Similarity rate = the degree of resemblance between two different texts. A similarity does not automatically mean plagiarism; it may result from carelessness, a failure to cite a source, or a misreferenced source.
The interpretation of the similarity rate leads to the plagiarism rate.

The detected sources are the starting point for your correction work.
The plagiarism checker also indicates the location of the passage containing similarities.

Here are the steps to follow to correct misquoted sources:

Analyze your document to detect potential plagiarism.
For each passage with similarities: put borrowed text in quotation marks and mention the source of the information or the quote, along with the author.
When citing sources in the text, be sure to follow the citation rules prescribed by your institution and professors.
Include all detected sources in the bibliography at the end of your assignment.
When citing sources in the bibliography, ensure you follow the citation rules recommended by your institution and professors (e.g., APA, MLA standards).

3. What Makes a Good Plagiarism Checker?

A plagiarism checker that adapts to your needs!

Before discussing the essential criteria to consider when choosing your tool, it is important to understand what makes a good plagiarism checker!

A good plagiarism detection software or plagiarism checker is a tool that adapts to your needs.

As a student, your needs may vary depending on your level of study, the nature of the assignment, the level of accuracy required, the educational resources you need, and your values…

Examples of Various Uses of a Plagiarism Checker

First-year university student analyzing a synthesis paper:

They use plagiarism detection software to identify parts of their work where they may have failed to properly cite their sources.
They also take the opportunity to learn how to avoid plagiarism and to familiarize themselves with different citation rules.

Second-year Master's student submitting their thesis:

They use plagiarism detection software to conduct a thorough analysis of their thesis to ensure it contains no form of plagiarism.
The results from the plagiarism check allow them to correct any misquoted sources. They include the plagiarism analysis certificate in their submission.

Discover our plagiarism checker

The 6 Main Criteria for Choosing Your Plagiarism Checker

How do you choose the best plagiarism checker? What are the main criteria to consider when looking for the best anti-plagiarism software?

We asked several students. Here are the 6 main criteria selected by students, which we validate!

The Price of the Plagiarism Checker

Price remains the number one choice criterion for students. As a student, it is normal to prioritize finding affordable anti-plagiarism software due to the limited financial resources available to you.
Take this criterion into account during your search to identify the best affordable anti-plagiarism software.
Be cautious with free plagiarism checkers!

The Reliability of the Plagiarism Checker

The purpose of anti-plagiarism software is to check for plagiarism in your document and help you correct misquoted sources. If the plagiarism checker cannot effectively identify plagiarized passages and misreferenced sources, the software is not fulfilling its role.

What's the best free online anti-plagiarism software?

3. The ergonomics of anti-plagiarism software

It's essential that your plagiarism checker is easy to use. Also pay attention to the analysis results the anti-plagiarism software will provide. The anti-plagiarism analysis report should be intuitive and the results easy to interpret. Feel free to test the plagiarism checker before using it, or access demo documents, to see what the analysis results look like.

4. Corporate image

It's important to consider the image of the company developing the plagiarism checker you're using. You shouldn't entrust your documents and personal data to just anyone!
just anyone!
Opt for serious, trustworthy anti-plagiarism software that has been approved by your teachers and peers.

Which Free Plagiarism Checker Software to Choose?

5. Data confidentiality

The way your data is handled is a very important criterion when choosing a plagiarism checker. Often ignored by students, unethical data processing can lead to tricky situations: resale of your data on the black market, resale of your documents to third parties...
Beware of free anti-plagiarism software!

6. Educational resources offered by anti-plagiarism software

Pay close attention to the educational resources provided by the plagiarism checker you choose. Resources can take many forms: a guide to citation rules, a guide to the different forms of plagiarism, tips on how to avoid plagiarism...
These educational resources help you to better understand plagiarism, its forms, the issues involved and how to avoid it.

Free Plagiarism Checkers: Why You Should Be Cautious?

There are several plagiarism checkers that offer to check plagiarism in your documents for free.
It is crucial to be cautious when using these plagiarism checkers!

A plagiarism checker uses many resources to analyze your documents: servers, developers, designers, support teams, resource creation teams, websites...
With free anti-plagiarism software, the service may appear to be free, but there is likely a catch!

Here are the main dangers of free anti-plagiarism software:

Unreliability: if the plagiarism checker is unreliable, it may falsely indicate an insignificant plagiarism rate (below 10%, for example). The results detected by your institution's anti-plagiarism software may be different.

Non-confidentiality of your documents: some free online anti-plagiarism software resells documents imported by users to third parties. This can lead to difficult scenarios. If your documents are resold and reused by others, as if they were their own creations, you could find yourself accused of plagiarism, even if you are the legitimate author.

free university anti plagiarism software

Non-confidentiality of your personal data: by communicating your information to untrustworthy actors, you expose yourself to the risk of resale of your personal data. The sale of personal data takes place on a large scale on certain social networks such as Telegram. There are even platforms specialized in the resale of personal data...

We advise you to take these aspects into account when choosing the best anti-plagiarism software for your dissertation, thesis or internship report.

Don't forget to take a look at the plagiarism checker's terms and conditions. This will give you peace of mind about the confidentiality of your data.

How to Get Free Access to the Compilatio Studium Plagiarism Checker?

You can still benefit from a free analysis if you are sponsored by your institution.

If your institution has a Compilatio Magister or Magister+ subscription, you can get a free anti-plagiarism analysis of 40 pages with the Compilatio Studium plagiarism checker for students. This will allow you to test the reliability of our software.

More Information About Studium Sponsorship

In summary, the main criteria to consider when choosing the best plagiarism checker for students are as follows: price, reliability, user-friendliness, company image, data privacy, educational resources, and customer support service.

If you keep these 6 selection criteria in mind while looking for your plagiarism checker, you'll be sure to choose the best tool to check your assignments, detect plagiarism, and correct improperly cited sources.

➡️ Choose the best plagiarism checker for students: Compilatio Studium
A reliable, educational, and privacy-respecting plagiarism checker.

The selection criteria are different if you're looking for a plagiarism checker for teachers.

Refer to our comparison guide to identify the best plagiarism software for your institution.

What Criteria to Choose the Best Plagiarism Checker for Students?