The short answer
Plagino's plagiarism checker for students compares your .docx draft with the full text of open-access academic papers indexed by CORE. It reports runs of eight or more identical words and shows you the exact overlapping text. It does not search the open web, paywalled journals, other students' papers or Turnitin's repository.
What does Plagino's plagiarism checker compare your paper against?
It compares your paper with open-access academic literature: journal articles, theses, books and repository papers that are free to read and indexed by CORE. CORE describes itself as a not-for-profit service that collects research from repositories and journals, and as, to its knowledge, the world's largest collection of full-text open access research papers.
Plagino uses CORE in two stages. First, it picks distinctive terms from across your paper, such as specialist words and names, and searches CORE for papers on your topic. Then it downloads the full text of up to 100 of the most likely candidate papers and compares your writing with them word by word on its own servers. Only matches it can confirm against a paper's full text are reported.
That design matters for how you read the result. A match is never a guess from a search engine. If Plagino says a passage matches a paper, it can show you the exact words that appear in both.
Why academic source matching?
Most student essays draw on papers from their own subject. The common slip is a sentence lifted from a journal article during note-taking, then pasted into a draft without quotation marks. Academic source matching is built for exactly that case: it searches the literature your paper is about, not the whole internet.
The trade-off is coverage. Because Plagino searches by topic and then compares a limited set of candidate papers, it can miss a source that CORE holds but that did not surface for your topic. And CORE only holds papers that are openly available. Treat the check as a strong test against the open academic literature in your field, not a complete one.
Your own earlier scans
Plagino also keeps irreversible fingerprints of documents you have scanned, so a later scan on your account can be checked against your earlier ones. This only ever compares your work with your own previous uploads. It never compares your paper with anyone else's.
What does it not check?
Every plagiarism checker searches a different pool of sources, and the pool decides what it can find. Here is Plagino's, stated plainly.
| Source | Checked? | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Open-access academic papers indexed by CORE | Yes | Copied passages from freely available journal articles, theses and repository papers on your topic can be found. |
| Your own earlier Plagino scans | Yes | A revised draft will overlap with the version you scanned before. That is expected. |
| The open web (Wikipedia, blogs, news, essay sites) | No | Text copied from websites will not be flagged. |
| Paywalled journals and books | No | Subscription-only articles are not in the comparison. |
| Other students' papers | No | Plagino does not compare your paper with other users' submissions. |
| Turnitin's private repository | No | No public tool can see it, and Plagino does not claim to. |
So a clean Plagino result means no long verbatim matches were found in the open-access papers it compared. It does not mean your paper would show 0% in Turnitin. If you need a check against the web or Turnitin's content as well, our guide to the best plagiarism checker for students compares the options, and our Turnitin alternatives guide explains what each one can and cannot see.
What counts as a match?
A match is a run of at least eight consecutive words that appears in both your paper and a source. Capital letters and punctuation are ignored, so a sentence copied with different commas still matches. Short common phrases do not, because eight words in a row rarely line up by chance in academic writing.
Overlapping runs are joined, so a copied paragraph shows up as one continuous highlighted passage rather than a scatter of fragments. Your plagiarism score is the share of your checked words that fall inside a confirmed match.
What it will not catch
Because matching is verbatim, close paraphrase is not detected. If someone reworded a source sentence by sentence, swapping words so no eight-word run survives, Plagino will not flag it. Translated text is not detected either. A paraphrase that follows a source's structure without credit can still be plagiarism, so a low score is not permission to skip citations.
Quotations still match, and that is fine
Plagino does not exclude quoted text. A correctly quoted and cited passage of eight words or more will appear as a match, because the words really are the same. When you read the report, check each match against your citations: a cited quotation is legitimate, an uncited one needs fixing.
Parts of your document that are skipped
Plagino checks the body of your paper. It skips the reference list or bibliography, tables, captions, headings, list items, very short paragraphs and paragraphs that are mostly citations, so your bibliography does not inflate the score.
How to check your paper for plagiarism with Plagino
The whole check takes a few minutes. You need your paper as a Word file.
- 1
Save your paper as .docx. Plagino accepts Word documents (.docx) up to 10 MB. If you write in Google Docs, use File, Download, Microsoft Word.
- 2
Upload and start the scan. Sign in, drop the file on the new scan page and start it. The same scan runs the plagiarism check and the AI-writing check.
- 3
Read the report. Open the PDF report. Amber passages are confirmed matches with an academic source or your earlier scan; the source list shows where each one came from.
- 4
Fix the citations. For each amber passage, add quotation marks and a citation, or rewrite it in your own structure and still cite the idea. Then check that every source in the list also appears in your references.
- 5
Keep the report. Save the PDF with your drafts. A rescan of the revised paper will show overlap with your earlier scan, which is expected.
What does the plagiarism report show?
The report is a PDF of your own document with two kinds of highlight. Amber passages are word-for-word matches verified against a source's full text. Cyan passages are the separate AI-writing signal from Plagino's AI detector. The two are independent: a passage can be one, both or neither.
After the highlighted pages comes a plagiarism summary. It gives your overall plagiarism percentage, how many of your words matched out of how many were checked, and two separate figures: matches with academic sources, and overlap with your own earlier scans. The headline percentage is the higher of the two, so if you rescanned a revised draft, look at the academic figure to see what still needs attention.
The source list names each matched work with its title, authors, year, journal or publisher, a DOI or link where CORE provides one, and whether it is a journal article, book, thesis or repository paper. Sources are ordered by how many of your words they match, and each one points back to the exact overlapping words in your document.
Plagino's reports say on their face that the scores are review evidence, not a sole determination. A match shows that words are shared. Whether that is plagiarism depends on whether you credited the source.
How much does the plagiarism checker cost?
Every scan includes both the plagiarism check and the AI-writing check, on every plan.
| Plan | Price | Scans | Extras |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0, no card | 3 per month | Same sentence-level report as Pro |
| Pro | $19 per month | 20 per day | Priority queue, email support |
| Team | Custom | By agreement | Multi-user accounts, shared scan history, for departments and writing centres |
You can create a free account and run your first scan straight away. Full plan details are on the pricing page, and departments can email [email protected] about the Team plan. Teachers and writing centres should also read our page on AI detection for teachers.
Plagino is built and run by Research Crave, an academic-services business in Birmingham, England, that has been running since 2018. Uploaded documents are not used to train AI models, and you can delete any scan from your dashboard. Only short extracts needed for matching are sent to CORE.
Frequently asked questions
Is Plagino's plagiarism checker free for students?
Yes. The Free plan gives 3 scans a month with no card, and each scan includes the plagiarism check and the AI-writing check. Pro costs $19 a month for 20 scans a day.
Does Plagino check against Turnitin's database?
No. Turnitin's repository of student papers is private, and no public checker can search it. Plagino compares your paper with open-access academic papers indexed by CORE and with your own earlier scans.
Will Plagino give the same score as Turnitin?
No. Turnitin checks sources Plagino cannot, including the open web and its private repository of student papers. Use Plagino's report to find and fix uncited passages, not to predict a Turnitin percentage.
Does Plagino detect paraphrasing?
No. It reports runs of eight or more identical words, so reworded text is not flagged. Paraphrasing a source without citing it is still plagiarism, so cite every idea you take from a source.
Does Plagino store my paper or share it with other students?
Your document and report stay in your own account until you delete the scan. Plagino keeps irreversible fingerprints so later scans on your account can be checked against earlier ones, but your paper is never compared with other users' papers and is not used to train AI models.
Why does my quoted passage show up as a match?
Plagino does not remove quotations before matching, so a quote of eight words or more appears as a match. That is expected. If the quote is in quotation marks and cited, it is not plagiarism.