Thesis plagiarism checker.
Check your master's thesis before submitting. Pro tier ($23/mo) handles 10,000 words per check — perfect for chapter-by-chapter during writing. Premium ($79/mo) handles 50,000 words for a full-thesis pass before the oral defence. Citation-aware. EU residency for European thesis programs.
Four things that make a master's thesis different from both an essay and a doctoral dissertation.
Master's-level scholarly writing has its own conventions — citation style still settling, single-supervisor relationship, 12–18-month timeline, often the writer's first long-form work. The classifier is tuned for it.
10,000-word per check on Pro
Master's theses run 15,000–40,000 words typically (humanities longer, STEM shorter). Pro tier ($23/mo) handles 10,000 words per check — chapter-by-chapter fits. Premium tier ($79/mo) handles 50,000 in one pass for the full-thesis review before submission. Free tier (2,500 words) is enough for a section sanity-check, not full review.
Self-check before your supervisor's red pen
Unlike a doctoral committee, master's students typically work with one supervisor. The self-check catches the uncited paraphrase before your weekly meeting — saves the supervisor reviewing the same chapter for the third time with the same fix requests. Cheaper than burning a supervisor meeting on basics.
From undergrad essays to scholarly conventions
First long-form work for many writers means citation style still settling. The classifier detects MLA / APA / Chicago / Harvard / Vancouver / IEEE and flags inconsistent in-text citation as a separate issue from plagiarism — useful when you started chapter 1 in MLA and switched to APA by chapter 4 without noticing.
Shorter than a PhD, longer than coursework
Most master's theses take 12–18 months active writing. Engine commit stamped on every report; reproduce your January self-check in October when your supervisor finally returns it. Flat-rate Premium means iteration across the writing arc costs nothing extra — vs per-document credit pricing on iThenticate ($125/doc) which gets unaffordable past the third revision.
Three milestones across the 12–18 months.
Master's theses follow a similar arc to dissertations but compressed — coursework integration during proposal, chapter drafts during the writing year, final pass before defence.
01 · Proposal + lit review (months 1–3)
Self-check the proposal + the literature review chapter. Lots of paraphrase here — that's the nature of a lit review. Citation-aware classification separates PARA-CITED (legitimate, low weight) from UNCITED-PARA (the actual issue). Catches over-direct lifting from your undergrad coursework — a common source of accidental self-recycling at this stage.
02 · Chapter drafts (months 4–14)
Self-check each chapter as you finish it. Pro tier ($23/mo) covers per-chapter checks comfortably. Per-paragraph AI detection is coming soon (on the v1.2 roadmap) — useful at master's level where AI use is a real conversation with your supervisor. The verdict will be per-paragraph (not per-doc), so a chapter where you used Grammarly for the first draft and rewrote in your own voice gets the per-paragraph picture, not a single percentage.
03 · Full-thesis pass (months 15–18)
Upgrade to Premium for the 50,000-word full-thesis pass. Bibliography auto-excludes. Inconsistent citation style flagged separately from plagiarism. Print the report; bring it to your defence prep meeting. Reproducible against the engine commit if a panel member asks weeks later.
Six citation styles auto-detected. Wrong-style-for-your-program flagged separately.
Master's-level writing is where citation conventions still settle. The classifier detects which style you're using, flags inconsistencies, and surfaces style-vs-program-requirement mismatches as a separate signal from plagiarism.
01 · MLA · 9TH ED
Modern Language Association. Standard for English, literature, comparative literature, humanities programs. Parenthetical (Author page) in-text + Works Cited. Common in US humanities master's programs. The detector handles MLA-style block quotes (4+ lines, indented, no quotation marks) as expected.
02 · APA · 7TH ED
American Psychological Association. Standard for psychology, sociology, education, communications, business. Author-date in-text + References list. DOI auto-resolution. Common in US + international social-science programs. Distinguishes legitimate APA structure from accidental MLA-APA mixing.
03 · CHICAGO / TURABIAN
Two variants: notes-bibliography (humanities, history) and author-date (sciences). Footnote insertion supported. Common in history and humanities thesis programs, particularly in the US Midwest. The detector recognises Turabian's lighter weight on Latin abbreviations (ibid, op cit) common in older programs.
04 · HARVARD
UK + Australia + Commonwealth default. Author-date in-text + Reference list. Subtle differences from APA the classifier catches — common at master's level where students mix the two by mistake (UK programs often allow both, but inconsistency within a thesis is a marking issue).
05 · VANCOUVER
Medical, biomedical, nursing master's programs. Numbered citations in superscript or square brackets, References list ordered by first citation appearance. PubMed ID resolution supported. Common in clinical research master's programs internationally.
06 · IEEE
Engineering, computer science, electrical engineering master's programs. Numbered in square brackets, References list ordered by appearance. Auto-formats from CrossRef DOIs and arXiv IDs. Common in STEM-discipline master's programs particularly in US + EU technical universities.
What a chapter report looks like for a master's-level draft.
Per-paragraph classification with source DOIs and citation-style detection. The headline number reflects only the unattributed categories; citation-style mismatches flagged separately.
What we index — and the gap vs ProQuest, honestly.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
Open-access aggregator of theses + dissertations from 200+ universities globally. Covers most US + European + Australian institutional repositories. Indexed continuously. Cross-checks your master's thesis against prior masters' work from the same disciplinary community.
Coverage: ~6M open-access theses worldwideEuropean thesis portal
Aggregates open-access theses from ~600 European universities (UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Scandinavia). Indexed via OAI-PMH. Strong on humanities + social sciences. Essential if you're writing in a European program where your committee will look at peer theses across the continent.
Coverage: ~1.4M European thesesOpen Access Theses & Dissertations
Search portal for ~6M theses worldwide. Cross-walks NDLTD + DART-Europe + Brazilian + Canadian thesis databases. The classifier surfaces matches by repository so you can see WHICH institution's thesis your phrasing is closest to.
Coverage: ~6M global theses (deduped)What we don't have
ProQuest's paid dissertation/thesis database (~5M US theses + dissertations) is proprietary; we cover the open-access subset only. If your program specifically requires checking against paywalled US thesis content from 1997-onwards, iThenticate has that dataset. Honest concession.
Read the iThenticate comparisonBring the printed report to your weekly meeting. Save your supervisor an hour.
The economics of a supervisor meeting: typically 45–60 minutes, often the only synchronous conversation about your thesis that month. Spending that hour on “chapter 3 has an uncited paraphrase in paragraph 7” — when the self-check could have surfaced it before the meeting — is the most expensive way to use that time. The printed report (Export PDF, two clicks) is what gets handed across the table. Per-interval classification with source DOIs makes the conversation “this is a paraphrase of Smith 2023, here's the citation we need to add” rather than “this might be plagiarism”. Cheaper for you, more useful for your supervisor, and saves the third re-read of the same chapter for the same fix request. The engine is Apache 2.0; if your supervisor wants to look at the threshold logic, they can. Some do.
Read the supervisor-meeting guideWhat master's students actually ask.
- My thesis is 25,000 words. Which tier do I need?
- Pro at $23/mo gets you 10,000 words per check — three passes covers your 25,000-word thesis. Most students run Pro during the writing year (per-chapter checks) and upgrade to Premium ($79/mo) for one month at the end to do the full-thesis pass in 50,000-word chunks. Free tier (2,500 words) only works for a single section sanity check.
- Will my school see that I ran a self-check?
- No. Self-checks live in your own account, encrypted at rest. We don't have an institutional dashboard that surfaces master's-student self-checks to your university or supervisor. The only check the school sees is one it initiated through its LMS integration (Canvas / Moodle / Blackboard), and you'll know when that's happening because it's tied to an assignment.
- What about citation styles?
- Six auto-detected: MLA 9th, APA 7th, Chicago / Turabian, Harvard, Vancouver, IEEE. The classifier flags inconsistencies (you started in MLA and switched to APA midway) as a separate signal from plagiarism — same for missing pin-cites and incorrectly-formatted in-text references. Most master's-level issues are formatting, not integrity; the report separates them.
- I'm reusing parts of my undergraduate honours thesis. Is that OK?
- Depends on your program's policy. Most institutions allow it with explicit disclosure in the preface; some require substantive rewriting. Add your honours thesis URL to the allowlist (institutional repository or OATD); matched intervals tag as SELF-CITE-MASTERS and surface separately. The classifier shows you what's recycled; your supervisor decides what's allowed.
- What if I'm writing in a non-English thesis program?
- Detection is calibrated for English, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Ukrainian at launch, with more languages rolling out. Detection quality is benchmarked on PAN-PC-11; per-language evaluation is on the roadmap. Particularly relevant for European master's programs writing in the local language; the indexed corpus covers academic content across these languages, including non-English thesis repositories from NDLTD + DART-Europe.
- How will the AI detector work on a thesis?
- AI detection is coming soon (on the v1.2 roadmap). It will report per-paragraph AI-likelihood (Binoculars, Hans et al. 2024). The verdict will be paragraph-level, not document-level, so you can see which paragraphs read AI-likely and which don't. ESL-adjusted band when the lexical signature suggests non-native English (Stanford 2023 documented 61.3% FPR on naive detectors; we mitigate it, with the residual rate documented rather than claimed). Useful for transparently disclosing AI use to your supervisor if your program's policy requires it.
- Does it integrate with Zotero / Mendeley?
- BibTeX import for the allowlist (your prior coursework essays, qualifying papers, honours thesis). Drop your Zotero export or paste your ORCID; the allowlist populates from your reference library. Real-time sync with Mendeley + EndNote is on the v1.2 roadmap; BibTeX import works today.
- What happens to my thesis after the check?
- Stored only in your tenant-isolated database, encrypted at rest, accessible only with your passphrase. Purged after 30 days unless you opt into retention. Detection models pre-trained on public corpora; we don't add student thesis content to training. Right-to-erasure: delete your account and every fingerprint we hold for you is deleted within 24 hours.
- Can I run the engine inside my university's network?
- Yes — Apache 2.0 + Docker. Common at European master's programs with strict GDPR-residency requirements. Pair with your existing Postgres + Redis on your university's infrastructure; no submission traffic leaves the campus network. Some Bologna-area programs explicitly require this for thesis pre-submission checks.
- Will it catch the differences from my dissertation?
- If your master's thesis becomes the seed of a doctoral dissertation later (cumulative-PhD path), add your master's thesis URL to the dissertation allowlist; matched intervals tag as SELF-CITE-MASTERS at the doctoral stage. The classifier handles the master's-to-doctoral evolution — what's expected reuse vs what needs rewriting depends on your doctoral program's policy.
Run a chapter. Bring the report to your supervisor.
Drop a chapter into Noplag. See the per-paragraph classification with source DOIs. Free tier covers a 2,500-word section sanity check; Pro ($23/mo) handles per-chapter checks; Premium ($79/mo) handles the full-thesis pass before defence.