An AI detector that shows you the sentences.
Upload a draft and Plagino scores it sentence by sentence, matches passages against open academic literature, and hands back a PDF you can read line by line — not a single number you have to guess at.
3 free scans every month. No card required. See pricing.
Plagino is an AI detector for essays and other academic writing. Upload a Word file and it marks the sentences that read as AI-generated, matches passages against open academic sources, and returns a PDF report you can read line by line. The free plan includes 3 scans a month, with no card.
Two checks, one report.
Every upload runs through AI detection and source matching, and comes back as a document you can read line by line.
Sentence-level AI detection
Not just a document score. Plagino marks the exact sentences that read as AI-generated, so you know what to rewrite.
Academic source matching
Passages are matched against open academic literature and your own prior uploads, with every match listed.
PDF report
Every finished scan produces a shareable PDF with the highlights and the matched source list.
One list, nothing else
Your dashboard is a list of files with the AI score, the plagiarism score, and a link to the report. No dials to read.
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2 of 4 sentences flagged
Draft in, report out.
Three steps, and only one of them is yours.
- 1
Upload your draft
Drop in a .docx up to 10MB. Nothing to install, no formatting to fix first.
- 2
We run both checks
Our in-house detector scores the writing sentence by sentence while passages are matched against academic sources.
- 3
Read the report
Usually within a couple of minutes you get an AI score, a plagiarism score, and a PDF with every flagged passage marked.
Who is an AI detector for essays for?
An AI detector for essays is for anyone who needs a second look at a piece of academic writing before it is judged: the student who wrote it, or the teacher who has to read it. The detector gives both a list of sentences to look at, not a ruling.
Students checking a draft before they submit
If you wrote the draft yourself, a scan shows you which sentences read as machine-like to an automated check, so none of them surprises you later. Read each flagged sentence back. If it says what you meant, leave it. If it is filler you could not defend out loud, rewrite it in your own words, whatever produced it.
Plagino is an independent checker, not the one your institution runs. Read your course's AI policy first, and see how to check a paper before you submit it for what a pre-submission check can and cannot tell you.
Teachers who need a second look at a submission
For an instructor, the report is a reason to read a paper more closely, never a verdict. It shows the flagged sentences in context and lists any matched sources, so you can see what triggered the flag and ask the writer about it. There is more on this in our page for AI detection for teachers.
If a flag has already led to an accusation, read why AI detectors flag human writing and what a writer can do when they are falsely accused of using AI.
How accurate is Plagino as an AI essay detector?
In Plagino's March 2026 test of 1,000 documents, Plagino caught 97.4% of AI-written documents and wrongly flagged 0.8% of human-written ones. Turnitin caught more AI writing (98.2%) with 1.4% false flags. The table shows all seven tools on the same documents.
The mix was 500 AI-written (GPT-4o, Claude and Gemini, some lightly human-edited) and 500 human-written. Plagino made this test and is one of the seven tools in it, so read the full method and the CSV on the benchmark page before relying on our ranking.
| Detector | AI-written caught | Human-written wrongly flagged | False flags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turnitin | 98.2% [96.6–99.1%] | 1.4% [0.7–2.9%] | 1 in 71 |
| Plagino (this site) | 97.4% [95.6–98.5%] | 0.8% [0.3–2.0%] | 1 in 125 |
| Originality.ai | 95.6% [93.4–97.1%] | 4.1% [2.7–6.2%] | 1 in 24 |
| Copyleaks | 91.3% [88.5–93.5%] | 2.2% [1.2–3.9%] | 1 in 45 |
| GPTZero | 88.9% [85.8–91.4%] | 5.7% [4.0–8.1%] | 1 in 18 |
| Academi.cx | 86.4% [83.1–89.1%] | 1.9% [1.0–3.5%] | 1 in 53 |
| TurnDetect | 79.5% [75.7–82.8%] | 6.3% [4.5–8.8%] | 1 in 16 |
Read both columns. A high detection rate means little if the tool also flags honest writers, and a false flag lands on a person. When two tools' intervals overlap, as Plagino's and Turnitin's false-flag intervals do, this run cannot say for certain which is lower.
The numbers describe one corpus in one month. Detectors update their models often, so a tool may have improved or slipped since. For tool-by-tool detail see our comparisons with GPTZero, Copyleaks, Originality.ai and Scribbr, or the wider guide to the best AI detectors. Plagino has not benchmarked Scribbr.
How do you read an AI detection report?
Start with the flagged sentences, not the score. A percentage tells you how much of a paper was flagged. It does not tell you why, and it cannot tell you who wrote it.
- 1
Open the report and find the highlighted sentences
Each finished scan appears in your dashboard with an AI score, a plagiarism score and a link to the report. Open the report and read the highlighted sentences in the order they appear in the paper.
- 2
Read each flagged sentence in context
Read the sentence with the ones around it. Generic, evenly paced and formulaic prose gets flagged whoever wrote it, so ask whether the sentence sounds like the writer and says something specific.
- 3
Check the matched sources separately
Source matches are a different check from AI detection. Open each listed source and see whether the overlap is a quotation, a common phrase or copied text that needs a citation.
- 4
Compare with other evidence of the writing process
A flag is one signal. Notes, outlines, earlier drafts and version history say more about how a paper was written than any score does.
- 5
Decide what to do and keep it proportionate
A writer can rewrite a weak sentence. A teacher can talk to the student. Neither should treat a detector result alone as proof of misconduct.
Is there a free AI detector for essays?
Yes. Plagino's free plan gives you 3 scans a month with no card and no trial timer, and free scans return the same sentence-level report as paid ones. The Pro plan is $19 a month for 20 scans a day. See pricing for the current plans.
Several other tools have free tiers with their own limits. The table shows what each vendor's page said in October 2026. Those are vendor statements, not Plagino findings.
| Tool | Free limit (vendor page) | In Plagino's benchmark? |
|---|---|---|
| Plagino | 3 scans a month, no card, full sentence-level report | Yes |
| GPTZero | Scans over 10,000 characters need a free account | Yes |
| Originality.ai | Up to 2,000 words, 3 free scans per day | Yes |
| Scribbr | Up to 1,200 words per submission, no sign-up | No |
| Pangram | Free credits; check its pricing page for the current limit | No |
Vendor pages: GPTZero, Originality.ai and Scribbr. A free tier with a generous word limit still tells you nothing about error rates, so check for published test results before you trust a score.
What do independent studies say about AI detectors?
Independent research is cautious. A 2023 study of 12 public tools plus Turnitin and PlagiarismCheck, published in the International Journal for Educational Integrity, concluded that the tools were neither accurate nor reliable and leaned toward labelling text as human-written. It also found that content obfuscation made them worse.
A separate study found that several GPT detectors consistently misclassified writing by non-native English speakers as AI-generated. Plagino has not published a separate result for non-native writers, so treat a flag on such writing with extra care.
How AI detection works, and where it stops
A detector is a probability estimate. Selling it as anything firmer than that is how students end up accused on the strength of a number nobody explained to them.
What does an AI detector actually measure?
It measures how predictable your writing is. Language models pick likely words, so text they generate tends to sit closer to the statistical middle of a sentence than a person's writing does. A detector scores that regularity and reports where it runs high.
That is a signal, not a confession. It says a passage reads the way generated text usually reads. It says nothing about who typed it, and nothing about intent.
Can an AI detector be wrong?
Yes, in both directions, and every detector on the market is. Plain, careful, formulaic prose reads as predictable whether a model or a person wrote it, which is why writing to a rubric, writing in a second language, and technical description all draw flags they should not.
Editing cuts the other way: a generated draft that has been rewritten in your own words can slip past. Treat any score as a prompt to reread a passage rather than as evidence about it.
What should I do with a flagged sentence?
Read it back. If it says something you meant, in words you would use, leave it. A flag is not an instruction to rewrite. If it reads like filler you would not defend in a viva, that is worth fixing whatever produced it.
The report exists so the decision stays yours. It shows the sentences and the matched sources, and stops there.
How is an AI detector different from a plagiarism checker?
An AI detector looks at how text is written. A plagiarism checker looks at where text came from. The first scores the style of a passage, such as how predictable its wording is. The second compares passages with other documents and sources and lists the overlaps.
Plagino runs both on every upload and reports them separately, because a paper can be fully original and still draw an AI flag, or be written by a person and still copy a source. Our plagiarism checker page explains the source-matching side.
Plagino is not the checker your institution runs, and no third-party tool can reproduce another one's score. It shows you what an automated check tends to flag, before someone else runs one. For how an institution's own tool behaves, see our guide on whether Turnitin detects AI.
See how seven detectors scored on the same 1,000 documents in our AI detector accuracy benchmark, compare Plagino with Copyleaks, Originality.ai and other AI detectors, or read why AI detectors flag human writing.
Frequently asked questions
Is Plagino's AI detector free?
Yes, there is a free plan with 3 scans every month and no card required. Free scans produce the same sentence-level report as paid scans. The Pro plan is $19 a month for 20 scans a day.
What files can I upload to the AI detector?
Plagino accepts Word documents in .docx format up to 10MB. It does not accept other file types. Save or export your draft as .docx from your word processor before you upload it.
How long does an AI detection scan take?
A scan usually finishes within a couple of minutes. When it is done you get an AI score, a plagiarism score and a PDF report with every flagged passage marked.
Does Plagino check for plagiarism as well as AI?
Yes, every upload runs both checks. Passages are matched against open academic literature and your own earlier uploads, and every match is listed in the report. It does not search the open web, paywalled journals or other students’ submissions.
Does Plagino use my essay to train AI models?
No. Plagino's privacy notice says uploaded documents are not used to train AI models. Documents and reports are kept while your account is active, and deleting a scan removes its stored file and report. The privacy notice has the full detail.
Will Plagino give the same score as Turnitin?
No, and no third-party tool can promise to. Plagino is independent and is not affiliated with Turnitin or any institution. Different detectors score the same paper differently, so your institution's own check is the only one that counts for your course.
Which AI writing tools does Plagino detect?
Plagino's March 2026 benchmark used AI-written text from GPT-4o, Claude and Gemini, some of it lightly edited by a person. Plagino has not published results for other models or for later model versions. New models can behave differently, so results may shift over time.
Can Plagino detect AI text that has been rewritten?
Results are less certain on heavily rewritten text. The benchmark included some lightly human-edited AI documents, but Plagino has not published a separate result for heavily rewritten or paraphrased text. A low score on an edited draft is not proof that a person wrote it.
How much text does an AI detector need?
Longer text gives a more reliable result. OpenAI said its own withdrawn classifier was unreliable on text under 1,000 characters, and a 2025 Chicago Booth Review article on a detector study said every tool lost accuracy on very short text. Plagino has not published its own minimum, so scan a full essay rather than a paragraph.
Can a teacher use Plagino to prove a student cheated?
No, a detector result alone is not proof of misconduct. Plagino's report shows flagged sentences and matched sources and leaves the decision to a person. Use it to start a conversation, and weigh it with drafts, notes and what the student can explain about the paper.
Does Plagino work inside Canvas or other learning platforms?
No, Plagino is a web app that takes .docx uploads. It does not plug into Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard or Google Classroom, so a teacher downloads submissions and uploads them. Departments that need a built-in integration should look at tools that list one.
Is Plagino a college AI detector?
No, Plagino is not a tool your college runs on your work. It is an independent checker you can use yourself before you submit, or that an instructor can use as one input among several. Your institution may use a different detector with different results.
How recent are Plagino's accuracy figures?
The published accuracy figures come from a test run in March 2026. As of October 2026 they do not reflect newer versions of any detector or newer AI models. The benchmark page shows the method, the data and the limits of that run.