When you buy an essay or hire a writer to write the paper, it is most likely that your professor will compare your work with other sources. Copyscape and Turnitin are the most popular plagiarism detection tools that help to detect plagiarized content. We will compare both of them and tell you which one is more effective.
Copyscape allows detecting duplicated content on web pages, while Turnitin detects web pages and books and articles.
What is Copyscape?
Copyscape is a plagiarism detector that checks submitted documents against billions of web pages to ensure no copies are present. The API can be integrated into your website or software for checking everything you offer.
It has been online since 2006 and currently services 1,000+ paying users, including HP, Intel, IBM, Google, and others. Copyscape is free for public documents which are not copyrighted (e.g., journal articles). It is available in 9 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese Simplified, and Japanese.
Pros
- Reliable and powerful plagiarism detector.
- API integration.
- Display original content on their websites with the use of Copyscape.
- Free unlimited API searches.
- Document sources
Cons
- Need to be integrated into your web service or software.
- There is no free plan for individuals
What is Turnitin?
Turnitin has been online since 2000. They currently service 30 million student papers per year through their web-based products. Turnitin is available in more than 70 languages, including English, French, Russian, Chinese Simplified, and Japanese.
Pros
- Free accounts for students
- Free unlimited API searches.
- Document sources
- Integrated with most of the CMS, CRMs, and eLearning platforms.
- Provide users with their very own plagiarism detecting toolkit.
Cons
- Need to be integrated into your web service or software.
- There is no free plan for educators and businesses.
Key Differences
If you are a student or a business who needs to check whether your students/clients have copied other people’s work, then Turnitin is the best choice for you. However, if you are an individual who needs to compare both public and private documents with billions of web pages, then Copyscape is the best choice for you.
Turnitin is an extremely popular plagiarism detecting service that has been used in over 6 million institutions all over the world. The main disadvantage of Turnitin is that it cannot detect copied phrases from public documents. On the other hand, Copyscape is not as popular, but it can be used for free to compare public and private records with billions of web pages.
Copyscape allows you to integrate their plagiarism detection service into your website or software, which gives you the advantage of checking everything submitted by your users. Turnitin, on the other hand, is used solely for educational purposes.
Comparison between Copyscape and Turnitin
- Copyscape specializes in finding copied content even on non-published documents, while Turnitin focuses on finding exact matches to published documents.
- It searches in 9 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese Simplified, and Japanese, while Turnitin only supports English.
- However, It is free for public documents which are not copyrighted (e.g., journal articles). Turnitin is free for students.
- It can be integrated into websites, while Turnitin cannot.
- Turnitin has 30 million students, educators, and businesses, while Copyscape only has 1,000+ paying users, including HP, Intel, IBM, Google, and others (as of August 2015).
- Copyscape is a reliable plagiarism detector for individuals and small businesses, while Turnitin is more appropriate for large companies.
- It offers unlimited API searches for free, whereas Turnitin has a certain number of searches allowed.
- Copyscape and Turnitin both offer document sources.
- Turnitin is an eLearning platform, while Copyscape is not.
Based on the article above, Copyscape vs. Turnitin can be an alternative tool to check your content against copied content on the internet. Depending on your need, either of these two tools might suffice, but from my point of view, Copyscape is much better than Turnitin.
Conclusion
Copyscape and Turnitin are plagiarism detecting tools, but they have different strengths. Copyscape is an efficient tool to check content from both public and private documents, while Turnitin is a plagiarism detection service for checking papers against published sources.