To check your Turnitin score before submitting, run your draft through a similarity checker first — either your university’s Turnitin self-check (draft) folder if one exists, or an independent originality checker — read the similarity percentage and the matched sources, fix any uncited or over-quoted passages, then re-check before you make your single official submission. Doing this matters because most assignments allow only one graded Turnitin upload, so the first version your tutor sees is usually the only one that counts. This guide covers why a pre-check is worth the effort, the three realistic options compared side by side, a step-by-step walkthrough of running and reading a report, how a pre-check differs from your university’s own check, and how to reduce similarity legitimately before the deadline.
Why check Turnitin before submitting at all?
The single biggest reason to check Turnitin before submitting is that you usually only get one shot. On most university assignment links, the submission inbox accepts one upload, locks after the deadline, and shows the originality report to your marker exactly as it lands. There is no “preview, then resubmit cleanly” button on a final inbox. If a chunk of your literature review matches a source you forgot to cite, the report flags it and your tutor sees it — before you ever had the chance to fix it.
This is the final-versus-draft problem. The version sitting in your Word document is a draft until the moment you submit; the second it hits the official inbox it becomes the final, marked, permanent record. A pre-submission check lets you treat your draft like a draft — inspect it, correct it, and only then promote it to final. Without that step you are effectively marking your own work blind and hoping the similarity score is acceptable.
It is worth being clear about what a high score does and does not mean. A similarity percentage is not a “plagiarism score”; it is the proportion of your text that matches sources in Turnitin’s databases. Properly quoted and cited material, your reference list, and common phrases all contribute to it. The goal of a pre-check is never to game the number — it is to find genuine problems (uncited paraphrase, accidental copy-paste, a quotation that should have been reworded) and put them right while you still can. If you want the bigger picture on what counts, our overview of the different types of plagiarism explains where unintentional matches usually creep in.
“Turnitin does not check for plagiarism in a piece of work. Instead, it checks a student’s work against other sources and identifies similarities between them.” — Turnitin guidance to institutions, on how the Similarity Report should be interpreted.
Your options for a pre-submission check, compared
There are three realistic ways to self-check Turnitin-style similarity before you submit. They differ a lot in coverage, cost and how closely they mirror what your university will actually see. Picking the right one depends on the stakes of the assignment and the deadline you are working against.
Option 1: Your university’s Turnitin draft or self-check folder
Many institutions set up a separate “draft”, “practice” or “self-check” Turnitin assignment alongside the final one. You upload, you get a genuine Turnitin Similarity Report against Turnitin’s databases, and you can usually resubmit (often with a short processing delay between attempts, such as 24 hours after the third try). This is the gold standard because it is Turnitin and it queries the same content pool your marker’s check will use.
The catch: not every course provides one, the draft folder may exclude student-paper repositories that the live check includes, and resubmissions can be rate-limited near a deadline. Always check your module’s assignment page first — if a self-check folder exists, use it. If it does not, you fall back to Option 2 or 3.
Option 2: A free web-based originality checker
A free checker is the fastest way to catch obvious problems — copied sentences, an unattributed paragraph lifted from a website, a quote you pasted and forgot to format. Our own free plagiarism checker scans up to 3,000 words against live web sources and returns matched passages quickly, which is ideal for a fast sanity pass on an essay or a single chapter. Because it works in a no-store mode, your text is not added to any repository — an important point, since uploading your own draft to a careless tool can ironically cause it to be flagged as “matching” a stored copy later.
The honest limitation: a free web checker compares against the open web, not the closed academic databases, journal archives and student-paper repositories that Turnitin licenses. It will catch the loud, obvious matches and miss quieter ones from paywalled journals or other students’ submissions. Treat it as a strong first filter, not a replacement for Turnitin. If a fast pass surfaces issues, our guide on how to remove plagiarism walks through fixing them properly.
Option 3: A full Turnitin-level originality report
When the stakes are high — a dissertation, a final-year project, a resubmission you cannot afford to get wrong — a free web check is not enough. Our paid Turnitin-level plagiarism report, available through plagiarism.researchprospect.com, is built on the same technology as Turnitin, so it checks against the same academic databases, journals and student-paper repositories your university uses, and it returns a full Similarity Report with a colour-coded breakdown of every matched source. The same service also runs an AI-writing indicator, mirroring our standalone AI content detector, so you can see both signals before you submit.
This is the closest you can get to your university’s check without using the university’s own inbox. It is the right choice for long, high-value documents where a surprise on the live check would be costly. The table below lays the three options out side by side.
| Option | What it checks against | Word limit | Cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| University Turnitin draft / self-check folder | Full Turnitin databases (may exclude student-paper repository) | Set by your tutor | Free (if provided) | The most accurate pre-check — use it whenever it exists |
| Free web checker (our plagiarism checker) | Live open-web sources | Up to 3,000 words | Free | A fast first pass on essays and single chapters |
| Full Turnitin-level report (our paid report) | Turnitin academic databases, journals, student papers + AI indicator | Whole document | Paid | Dissertations, final projects, high-stakes resubmissions |
Step by step: how to run a pre-submission check
Whichever option you choose, the workflow is the same: produce a clean draft, check it, read the report properly, fix real issues, and re-check. Here is how to do it without wasting your limited resubmission attempts.
- Finalise a near-complete draft first. Check the version you actually intend to submit, including your reference list and any appendices, so the report reflects the real document — not a half-written one you will change anyway.
- Choose the right checker for the stakes. Use the university draft folder if it exists; a free web checker for a quick essay pass; the full Turnitin-level report for a dissertation or anything high-value.
- Upload and wait for the report to generate. Turnitin-based reports can take a few minutes; longer documents take longer. Do this with hours, not minutes, to spare before the deadline.
- Read the overall similarity percentage and the source breakdown. The headline number alone tells you little — the matched-source list tells you where the score comes from.
- Separate legitimate matches from real problems. Cited quotations and your bibliography are fine; an uncited paraphrase or a copied sentence is not.
- Fix the genuine issues — add citations, reword properly, format quotations, trim over-quoting — then re-check to confirm the changes landed.
- Submit your final, corrected version to the official inbox once you are satisfied.
How to read the result (and what to ignore)
A similarity report has two parts that matter: the overall percentage and the matched-source list. Beginners fixate on the percentage; experienced students read the source list, because that is where you find out whether a match is a problem or completely fine. A 22% score made up entirely of correctly cited quotations and your reference list is healthy. A 9% score where every match is uncited paraphrase is the one to worry about.
There is no universal “pass” figure — acceptable thresholds vary by institution, module and assignment type, and some markers care far more about where the matches sit than the headline number. So never chase an arbitrary target. Instead, click into each highlighted match and ask: is this cited? Is it a legitimate quotation? Is it a standard phrase or a heading? Or is it text I should have written in my own words and attributed?
Fixing issues and reducing similarity — the legitimate way
Once you have separated real problems from noise, fixing them is straightforward and entirely above-board. To be unambiguous: “reducing similarity” here means improving the integrity of your writing, not disguising copied work. There is no honest trick to “beat” Turnitin, and you should never try — rewording to hide an idea you did not credit is still plagiarism, just harder to spot. The legitimate fixes are:
- Cite what you borrowed. If an idea, statistic or argument came from a source, attribute it. Our guides on how to cite correctly and referencing cover the mechanics across styles.
- Paraphrase properly, not cosmetically. Genuine paraphrasing restates an idea in your own structure and words, then cites the source — it is not swapping a few synonyms. See how to paraphrase for the technique, and the best paraphrasing tools if you want a starting point to then refine by hand.
- Format quotations correctly. Direct quotes belong in quotation marks (or as block quotes) with a citation; once formatted, Turnitin can be set to exclude them, and your marker reads them as intentional.
- Cut over-quoting. If half a paragraph is quoted, that is a writing problem, not a matching problem. Replace some quotes with your own analysis.
- Re-check after editing. Confirm the fix worked and that you did not introduce a new uncited passage while rewriting.
For a fuller treatment of the corrective side, our walkthrough on how to remove plagiarism and the broader explainer on what plagiarism is go deeper than space allows here.
What a pre-check shows vs your university’s check
It helps to be realistic about how close a pre-check gets to the official report. The honest answer: a university Turnitin draft folder is essentially identical; a full Turnitin-level report is very close; a free web checker is a useful approximation that will not catch everything. The differences come down to which databases each tool can see and how repositories are configured.
| Aspect | Free web pre-check | Turnitin-level report | Your university’s official check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open-web matches | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Academic journals & databases | Limited | Yes | Yes |
| Student-paper repository | No | Yes (where licensed) | Yes |
| AI-writing indicator | No | Yes | Depends on institution |
| Counts as your graded submission | No | No | Yes |
The one thing no pre-check can replicate perfectly is your institution’s exact repository settings — for instance, whether your own university stores past student papers that your draft might brush against. That is also why you should never submit your draft to an unknown tool that stores uploads: do that and your final official submission can match the stored copy of your own earlier draft. Reputable checkers, including ours, run in a no-store mode precisely to avoid this.
Check your work free before you submit
Scan up to 3,000 words against live web sources in minutes — no sign-up, nothing stored. Catch the obvious matches before your one official upload.
Timing your check and common mistakes to avoid
Even a perfect checking routine fails if you run it five minutes before the deadline. Reports take time to generate, fixes take time to make, and re-checks take time to confirm. Build in a buffer — ideally a day, at minimum a few hours — so a surprise match does not become a panic. A few mistakes to steer clear of:
- Don’t check a half-finished draft — the report will not reflect what you actually submit.
- Don’t chase a magic percentage; read the source list instead of obsessing over the headline number.
- Don’t reword to hide an uncited idea — that is still plagiarism, not a fix.
- Don’t upload to an unknown tool that stores your text and may later flag it against your own draft.
- Don’t leave it to the last minute, with no time left to act on what the report shows.
Used this way, a pre-submission check is one of the highest-value habits in academic writing: a short, honest loop that turns a single nerve-wracking upload into a calm, informed one. Run it on every assignment that matters, and the official Turnitin report should hold no surprises.
