1994 to 1998: John Barrie builds a peer-review system at UC Berkeley that becomes Turnitin. iParadigms LLC is formed to run it.
2009: A US appeals court rules in A.V. v. iParadigms that storing student papers for comparison is fair use.
2019: Advance Publications acquires Turnitin.
2023: AI writing detection launches for English.
2024 to 2026: AI detection expands to Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, German, Dutch and Turkish, and adds AI-paraphrase and humanizer (bypasser) detection.
What this means for students
Turnitin is a commercial service sold to institutions, so your access, and what you see, depends on your school's licence and settings. See how Turnitin works and how much Turnitin costs.
Check your paper on Turnitin first
Get the same similarity and AI writing reports your instructor sees for $3.99, usually within minutes. If AI writing is flagged, our editors can take it to 0%:
Turnitin AI writing report for a paper humanized by our editors: 0% detected as AI, and 0 AI-generated or AI-revised text. The submission ID is hidden for privacy.
Frequently asked questions
Who owns Turnitin?
Advance Publications, which bought Turnitin in 2019 for US$1.75 billion.
Where is Turnitin based?
Oakland, California, USA.
Who founded Turnitin?
John M. Barrie, Christian Storm, Emmanuel Briand and Melissa Lipscomb, through iParadigms, starting at UC Berkeley.