Frequently asked questions

CleanOutput is a free, browser-based AI writing detection tool. Paste any text — an essay, email, article, report — and it analyses the prose across nine linguistic dimensions to produce a "Clean Output Score" from 0 to 100. It also overlays color-coded highlights on your text showing exactly which words, phrases, and structures triggered each flag, with one-click alternatives to help you rewrite.

Yes, completely. There are no paid tiers, no word limits, no sign-up required. CleanOutput runs entirely in your browser, so there are no server costs to pass on to you. The site may carry advertising in the future to cover hosting costs, but the tool itself will always be free.

No account required — ever. Open the tool, paste your text, click Scan. That's it. We don't want your email address and we never ask for it.

No hard limit. Since processing runs in your browser, extremely long documents (50,000+ words) may take a second or two longer on older devices. For practical purposes, most documents scan instantly regardless of length. We recommend scanning sections rather than entire books — the metrics are more actionable at the essay/article level anyway.

Auto-Clean automatically replaces all detected high-risk vocabulary words with their first suggested alternative from our dictionary. It's a one-click starting point — the result still needs your editorial eye, but it strips the most obvious AI signatures instantly. After auto-cleaning, run the scan again to see your updated score.

Clicking any highlighted phrase in the output pane opens a small tooltip that explains why the phrase was flagged and shows 2–4 suggested alternatives. Click any alternative to instantly substitute it in place. The tooltip disappears when you click elsewhere.

CleanOutput is calibrated to catch the most common and statistically significant AI writing patterns. It is not a forensic AI detector and makes no claim to be one. Think of it as a quality audit rather than a verdict — it tells you what a careful human editor would also flag as suspicious or unnatural. No client-side tool can match the accuracy of models trained on millions of labeled AI/human writing pairs. But for identifying and fixing obvious AI signatures, it is highly reliable.

Yes, occasionally. A human writer who naturally favors formal vocabulary, or who writes in a consistent academic style, may score lower than their writing deserves. The vocabulary list flags words regardless of who wrote them — if you genuinely meant to use "leverage" in context, you can ignore the flag. The score is a guide, not a verdict.

The score represents how "human" the writing appears across nine dimensions, on a 0–100 scale:

• 85–100: Mostly human — few or no AI signatures detected
• 70–84: Likely human — minor signals, easily fixed
• 55–69: Mixed — significant AI patterns, notable revision needed
• 40–54: Likely AI — strong AI fingerprint across multiple dimensions
• 0–39: Strong AI signal — heavy AI patterns throughout

A score of 60 means the text shows notable AI patterns but has human elements too — typical of AI-generated text that has been lightly edited.

We cannot guarantee this, and we don't recommend using CleanOutput to deceive academic institutions or publishers. CleanOutput measures a different (though overlapping) set of signals compared to commercial AI detectors, which use large ML models trained on millions of examples. Improving your CleanOutput score means the writing is more stylistically varied and less formulaic — which is genuinely better writing, regardless of detector outcomes.

CleanOutput is optimised for formal prose: essays, blog posts, articles, professional emails, reports, and marketing copy. It performs less well on highly technical writing (code documentation, scientific methods), poetry, dialogue-heavy creative fiction, or non-English text. The metrics assume standard written English.

No. CleanOutput has no backend server, no database, and no logging infrastructure. All processing happens in your browser using JavaScript. Your text never leaves your device. We are architecturally incapable of storing it — there is no server to store it on.

No. The analysis runs entirely in your browser. We don't have servers that receive your keystrokes or text. We collect anonymous page-view analytics (page URL and browser type only) via a privacy-friendly analytics tool — no text content is ever included.

Yes. Since processing is entirely local, your confidential content never touches our servers. It's one of the key design decisions we made intentionally. No other AI detector we know of offers this guarantee.

Not against external sources. True plagiarism detection requires comparing your text against an index of billions of published web pages, academic papers, and books — a process that requires sending your text to a server. Since we refuse to do that, we cannot offer external plagiarism checking. CleanOutput does flag repeated phrases within your document (self-plagiarism / internal repetition). For external plagiarism checking, use Copyscape, Grammarly, or Turnitin.

CleanOutput maintains a dictionary of the 25 most commonly misspelled English words. It's intentionally conservative — it only flags words it's confident about, to avoid false positives. For comprehensive spell-checking, use your word processor or Grammarly in combination with CleanOutput.