Turnitin review

Turnitin checks student writing against other sources. A student submits an essay, usually through the school’s LMS, and Turnitin returns a similarity report that highlights passages matching web pages, published work and papers submitted by other students. Since 2023 it has also offered an AI writing report that estimates how much of a submission was likely written by a generative AI tool. It is used mainly by universities and secondary schools that set long written coursework, and it is owned by Advance Publications, which also owns Gradescope through Turnitin.

Who it’s for

Turnitin suits secondary schools, sixth form colleges and universities where students submit essays, coursework and extended projects. A head of English running a coursework unit for 150 students can see at a glance which essays include large copied passages, and teach referencing before the final deadline rather than after it.

It is not useful for primary schools or for teachers who mostly set short answers, maths or quizzes. If your main problem is marking load rather than copying, look at our guide to cutting marking time with apps instead.

What it does well

The similarity report is mature and fast. It shows each matched passage beside its source, with an overall percentage. The useful part is the detail, not the headline number. A report showing 30% is often quotes and a bibliography, while a 12% report can hide one paragraph lifted from a website.

The student paper database matters. Because Turnitin compares submissions against work sent in by other students, it catches essays handed down from an older sibling or shared between schools, which a web search would miss.

Marking tools sit on top of the report. Teachers can apply rubrics, drag reusable comments onto an essay and add general feedback, all in the same view. It works inside the main learning platforms, including Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard and Brightspace, so students submit where they already work.

It also works as a teaching tool. Some schools let students submit a draft and see their own similarity report, which shows them where their paraphrasing is too close to the source.

Where it falls short

The AI writing report needs careful handling, and Turnitin’s own documentation says so. Its report carries a disclaimer that the model may not always be accurate and “should not be used as the sole basis for adverse actions against a student”. Turnitin has said its document-level false positive rate is under 1% for documents with 20% or more AI writing, and it has given a sentence-level rate of about 4%. When Vanderbilt University turned the detector off in August 2023, it worked out that a 1% rate applied to its 75,000 papers from 2022 could have meant around 750 wrongly labelled.

Turnitin has added limits to reduce false positives. It shows an asterisk instead of a number for AI scores between 1% and 19%, because its testing found more false positives in that range. The detector needs at least 300 words of long-form prose, and Turnitin says it is not suited to code, short answers or unconventional poetry. Vanderbilt also noted that detectors have been found more likely to flag writing by non-native English speakers. Treat a high AI score as a reason to talk to the student and look at drafts and version history, never as proof. Our AI policy guide for schools covers how to set that process.

The default repository is a privacy question. Unless the school changes the setting, submitted papers are kept in Turnitin’s student paper repository for future comparison. Decide your setting before launch, not after a complaint from a parent.

Pricing

Turnitin is paid. It does not publish prices, and licences are quoted per school, district or institution. A single school may find the cost hard to justify if only a few departments use it. If you want the AI writing report, check that your quote includes it. Our guide to the total cost of school software explains what to ask about renewals and price rises.

Privacy and data

Turnitin’s privacy policy says it does not sell personal data to third parties. For EU customers it says it acts as a data processor for the institution, which remains the controller, and it uses standard contractual clauses for transfers outside the EEA. It says most products process data in both Europe and the United States, and that data is stored in the EU, the USA and Canada. For students under 13, it relies on the school to get parental consent. Turnitin says it complies with FERPA and that student records stay under the institution’s control.

The policy says papers are archived in the repository by default only for textual comparison, and that institutions can opt out. It lists refining the algorithms behind AI-based features such as text matching among its purposes for processing data. Ask Turnitin how it uses submitted work, where your data will be held, and how long it is kept.

Verdict

Turnitin’s similarity checking is thorough and well suited to schools that set long written coursework, and its marking tools are solid. Its AI writing score should be one piece of evidence among several, and Turnitin’s own disclaimer says as much. Primary schools, and secondary schools without much extended writing, can skip it and spend the money elsewhere in our assessment rankings.

See the best Turnitin alternatives