Most documents already live in a file: a thesis in Word, an article exported to PDF, a report saved from a text editor. Instead of copying page after page into a text box, you can upload the file itself and check the whole document for plagiarism at once. This page is for anyone who works with ready-made files: students, editors receiving manuscripts, website owners checking commissioned articles and authors preparing a submission.
Which files you can upload
- Word documents (.docx): the usual format for essays, theses and articles. Older .doc files need to be saved as .docx first.
- PDF files (.pdf): the checker reads the text contained in the PDF.
- OpenDocument files (.odt): documents from LibreOffice and similar editors.
- Plain text (.txt): handy when you copy text out of a website or a content management system.
Each file can be up to 10 MB. If you only need to check a fragment, you can also paste the text directly.
Preparing the file
The checker takes the text out of the file and compares it with pages found on the web. Everything in the text is included, so a little preparation gives a cleaner result:
- Remove the cover page, the table of contents, the bibliography and the appendices if you only care about the main text, and save the trimmed version as a separate copy.
- If a PDF was made by scanning paper pages, it may contain pictures of pages instead of text. Export the original document to PDF again, or upload the Word file instead.
- If a PDF is protected with a password, save an unprotected copy first.
- Documents with many images can exceed the size limit. The .docx version is usually smaller, or you can split the document into parts.
Step by step
- Click the upload area above and choose your .docx, .pdf, .odt or .txt file.
- Start the check and wait while the text is compared with web pages. Long documents take a little more time.
- Review the share of original text, the list of sources and the matching fragments.
- Download the result as a PDF if you need to send it to a colleague, a client or a supervisor.
Reading the result for a whole document
In a long file, matches are rarely spread evenly. They usually cluster in a few places: the theoretical chapter, the description of methods, a section built on legislation or official definitions. Go through the sources from the one with the most matches downwards and compare the fragments with the original pages. A match is not automatically plagiarism: quotations with citations, names of laws, standard terms and set phrases will always appear.
Word or PDF: which one to upload
If you have both, upload the version closest to the original. A Word file you wrote yourself contains clean text, and a PDF exported from it gives the same result. A PDF received from someone else may be a scan or a layout with columns, headers and footnotes mixed into the text, which can produce odd fragments in the result. In that case, ask for the editable original if you can.
Limits to keep in mind
The checker only finds matches with pages available on the web. It does not search private university databases, paid journals or unpublished work, and it does not detect AI-written text; use the AI detector for that. Uploads are free without registration within limits, with more checks for signed-in users and PRO subscribers.