What does an assignment checker check?

StudyRef's assignment checker reads your assignment brief, extracts the concrete requirements it states — word limits, formatting rules, required sections, source counts, citation expectations — and compares each one against your actual document. Every requirement comes back as met, not met, check this yourself, or could not be checked. It does not grade the work and it does not check plagiarism.

Can StudyRef check my assignment before I submit it?

Yes — that is the whole job. Upload the assignment and the brief as Word documents and StudyRef runs the comparison in one pass, free and without an account. It checks the things a checklist can verify, so you can spend your attention on the things only you can.

Does StudyRef predict my grade?

No. There is no score, no percentage and no predicted mark anywhere in the result, because a grade depends on judgment a requirements check cannot make. Tools that predict marks are modelling an opinion; StudyRef reports evidence about specific requirements and stops there.

Does StudyRef check plagiarism?

No. StudyRef does not compare your text against other texts, and the free check makes no external request at all. What it does check is the integrity of your own citations — whether every in-text citation matches a reference and every reference is cited — which is a different question from whether the text is original.

Does StudyRef detect AI-written text?

No. No AI detector runs in this check, and StudyRef makes no claim about how your text was written.

Can StudyRef check formatting requirements?

Yes, when your brief states them. Font, font size, line spacing, margins, indentation, page size and orientation are read from the .docx itself and compared against what the brief asks for. StudyRef never assumes a formatting convention your brief does not state.

Can StudyRef check the word limit?

Yes. The limit is read from your brief's wording — maximum, minimum or a range — and the count uses the same Word-compatible engine as StudyRef's free word count checker. Exclusions, such as the reference list not counting, are applied when the brief says so.

Do I need my assignment brief?

Yes. The requirements come from the brief — StudyRef checks your document against what your lecturer actually asked for, not against an invented standard. Without a brief there is nothing legitimate to check against. Upload it as a Word document; a rubric or guidelines document works too.

Can StudyRef check whether my sources actually support what I wrote?

That is a paid check rather than the free one, and it is the deepest thing StudyRef does. The claim you wrote is compared against the source's own text and comes back as supported, partly supported, contradicted, or not verifiable, with the passage it was judged against. It needs the full text of the source, so it runs where StudyRef can legally retrieve that text, which in practice means open-access articles. When the text cannot be obtained, the result says the claim could not be checked and why. The free anonymous check makes no external request at all and never comments on your sources.

What if StudyRef cannot get hold of one of my sources?

It says so for that source and moves on. A paywalled article, a broken link or a publisher that returns nothing all end the same way: the claims citing that source come back as not verifiable, with the reason. An unreachable source is never reported as a problem with your writing, and it is never quietly counted as a pass.

Do I need an account?

No. The free check runs without an account and shows you everything it found — every finding is in the first result, and nothing is computed and then hidden behind a sign-up.

How many free checks do I get?

One anonymous check per day — the same daily allowance a free account has. The free check uses no paid AI, so this is a fair-use limit, not a cost one. A free account keeps the daily check, removes the word ceiling on the free page, and keeps results with your work.

What happens when StudyRef cannot verify a requirement?

It says so, per requirement. A requirement that could not be read reliably, or that needs evidence the document does not carry, comes back as “could not check” with the reason — never as a silent pass and never as a failure. If your brief contains nothing StudyRef can verify mechanically, the result says nothing was checked, not that everything passed.

Assignment checker

Check your assignment against the concrete requirements in your brief before you submit. Upload both documents and StudyRef compares them — word limit, formatting, required sections, citations against your reference list, source counts — and tells you what it found and what it could not check.

It does not predict a grade, and it does not check plagiarism. It checks the things a checklist can actually verify, so you can spend your attention on the things only you can.

Your assignment

One Word document (.docx), up to 10 MB and 5,000 words. StudyRef reads formatting from the file itself, which is why a paste box would not work here.

Your assignment brief

The instructions your lecturer gave you — brief, rubric or guidelines, as Word documents (.docx), up to 10 files. The requirements come from here, so the check is only as good as the brief you provide.

1 free check a day without an account. Nothing you upload is saved.

Full Assignment Scan — $2.99

Complete requirement and evidence checking. One-time payment · No subscription · No account required.

Word documents (.docx) only, for your assignment and your brief — the same formats as the free check. Convert a PDF brief in Word before you pay.

You will be asked to re-select your files after payment.

What the assignment checker looks at

Every check starts from your brief. StudyRef extracts the requirements the brief actually states, then compares each one against the document you uploaded — never against a convention it invented.

Word count against the brief's limit: Maximum, minimum or a range, read from your brief's own wording. The count comes from the same Word-compatible engine as StudyRef's word counter, and rules about what counts are applied only when your brief actually states them.
Formatting your brief specifies: Font family, font size, line spacing, margins, indentation, page size and orientation — compared against the document's real formatting, read from the .docx itself. Only what the brief asks for is checked; StudyRef invents no university convention.
Required sections and components: An abstract, an introduction, a conclusion, a reference list — where the brief names a part your submission must contain, StudyRef looks for it in the document's structure.
Citations matched against your reference list: Every in-text citation is matched to a reference entry and every entry back to a citation. A citation with no matching reference and a reference nothing cites are the two findings that cost marks most quietly.
Source counts and recency: “At least 6 sources” is counted from your reference list. “Sources from the last 5 years” is checked against the years your references themselves state — and where an entry has no readable year, that entry is reported as unverifiable rather than guessed.
File format and naming rules: Where the brief states how the file must be named or submitted, StudyRef checks what it can see.

What it deliberately does not do

Most tools on this search result promise a mark. This one refuses to, and the refusals below are product boundaries, not modesty.

It does not predict your grade: A mark reflects judgment about argument, evidence and writing that no requirement checklist can stand in for. StudyRef reports requirement findings; it never totals them into a score, a percentage or a readiness figure.
It does not check plagiarism: Plagiarism detection compares your text against other texts, which StudyRef does not have and does not fetch. Checking that citations match the reference list is about the integrity of your own document — a different job.
It does not detect AI writing: StudyRef makes no claim about who or what wrote the text, and no detector runs anywhere in this check.
It does not judge argument or writing quality: “Demonstrate critical analysis” is a requirement only a person can assess. When your brief asks for one of these, StudyRef reports it as outside what it can check mechanically — never as a pass, never as a fail.
It does not certify compliance: A clean run means the checked requirements were met, and says nothing about the requirements that could not be checked. The result says which is which, every time.

What assignment requirements can StudyRef verify?

The check is only as good as the brief. Here is what happens to four real kinds of requirement wording — including the kind StudyRef refuses to guess about.

“2,500 words maximum, excluding the reference list.”
Checked
A number, a direction and an exclusion rule — all three are read and applied.
“Use Calibri 11 with 1.5 line spacing.”
Checked
Compared against the fonts and spacing actually stored in your .docx.
“Include at least six peer-reviewed sources.”
Partly checked
The six is counted from your reference list. Peer-review status is not something a document can prove about its own sources, so that half is reported as unverified rather than assumed.
“Demonstrate critical engagement with the literature.”
Not checkable — and says so
A judgment for your marker. StudyRef says it cannot check this — it does not pretend to.

If your brief contains only requirements StudyRef cannot verify mechanically, the result says nothing was checked — never that everything passed.

Doing it by hand instead? Turning a brief into a list of assignment requirements walks through the same method — including how many separate requirements can hide inside one sentence of a brief, and where the reading usually goes wrong.

How the check works

Upload both documents
Your assignment, and the instructions you were given — a brief, a marking rubric or a guidelines document — each as a Word document (.docx). StudyRef reads formatting straight from the file — fonts, spacing, margins — which is why a paste box could not do this job.
StudyRef extracts the requirements
The brief's own wording is parsed into concrete, checkable requirements. Each finding later quotes the wording it came from, so you can see why StudyRef believed something was required.
Each requirement is compared against your document
Word count, formatting evidence, document structure, and every citation matched against your reference list — all offline, all rule-based, no AI.
You get findings, not a verdict
Met, not met, check this yourself, or could not be checked — per requirement, with the reason. What could not be checked is stated, because silence should never read as approval.

Checking against a marking rubric

A marking rubric is a mixed document. Some rows state facts you can settle in ten minutes; others describe qualities only a reader can judge. StudyRef sorts them, and is explicit about which is which.

It reads the rubric you were given
A rubric, a brief or a guidelines document all go in the same place — they are the instructions StudyRef checks against. It finds the criteria, their weights and bands, and any penalty rule stated in them, keeping the wording each one came from.
It settles the criteria that have a definite answer
Length, formatting, required sections, document structure, citation and reference integrity, referencing style, and how many sources you have with their types and recency. A criterion asking for eight recent peer-reviewed sources is countable, and it gets counted.
It names the criteria that are your marker's judgement
Critical evaluation, originality, sophistication of argument. These come back stated as not mechanically assessable, with the criterion quoted, rather than being quietly folded into a pass. That is the useful output: a shorter list of what still needs a person.

What it will not do is place you in a band or predict a mark. A number like that would be guessed at precisely the criteria StudyRef has just told you it cannot assess — how to check an assignment against a rubric goes through the whole method, including what to do when the rubric and the brief disagree.

The four layers StudyRef can check

The first layer compares two documents you already have, so it can be certain and it is free. The other three make claims about the world outside your files — whether a source exists, what it is about, what it actually says — which means going and looking, and that is what a paid check pays for. They are listed apart because they are different kinds of evidence, not different amounts of it.

Layer 1
Your document against your brief
Rule-based, offline
Word limits, formatting, required sections, source counts and recency, and every in-text citation matched against your reference list. Both documents are in front of it, so it needs nothing from outside your files and no AI runs.
Free, including without an account
Layer 2
Your sources against the record
Looks the source up
DOIs, ISBNs and URLs are resolved against publisher and registry metadata, and what comes back is compared with what your reference claims. This is the layer that can tell you a source is not what the entry says it is — and the free check does not run it, which is why the free check never comments on whether a source is real.
Full Assignment Scan or Pro
Layer 3
Whether a source suits the claim
Looks the source up
Source suitability and topic match: whether the work you cited is the kind of source the brief asked for, and whether it is about the subject the sentence citing it is about.
Full Assignment Scan or Pro
Layer 4
Whether the source supports the sentence
Reads the source
The claim you wrote is compared against the source's own text and comes back as supported, partly supported, contradicted, or not verifiable — with the passage it was judged against. It needs the full text, so it runs where StudyRef can legally obtain it, which in practice means open-access articles it can retrieve. Where the text sits behind a paywall or cannot be fetched, the result says the claim could not be checked and why, rather than judging it from a title and an abstract.
Full Assignment Scan or Pro, where the source can be retrieved

A check that could not reach a source says so for that source. It is never counted as a pass, and it is never reported as something wrong with your writing.

Why this is not an AI grader

AI graders estimate what a marker might think of your work — a modelled opinion about quality that some students find useful, but not the job this tool does, and the two should not be confused.

A grade predictor answers

“What mark might this get?” — a modelled estimate of subjective judgment, which no tool can promise your marker will share.

StudyRef answers

“Does this document meet the concrete requirements in the brief?” — with evidence from your own files, requirement by requirement, and an honest “could not check” where evidence runs out.

Losing marks to a missed requirement — a word limit, a missing section, an uncited reference — is the most avoidable way to lose them. That is the problem this tool exists for.

How this differs from the other tools you already use

Most people arrive here with two or three of these already open, and each one answers a real question. None of them answers “does this document do what the brief asked for”, because none of them has the brief.

A citation generator: Answers: “How do I write this reference in APA?” — It formats a source you have already decided to cite. It never sees your brief, so it cannot know the brief asked for six sources from the last five years.
A word counter: Answers: “How long is this?” — It gives you a number. Whether that number is the one your brief asked for — and what your brief said to leave out of it — is a comparison against a second document a counter does not have.
A grammar checker: Answers: “Is this sentence well written?” — It reads your prose line by line. A missing abstract, a citation with no matching reference, and a 3,400-word essay with a 2,500-word limit are all invisible to it, because none of them is a sentence-level problem.
A general AI assistant: Answers: “What do you think of my essay?” — It will answer whatever you ask, confidently, including about requirements it inferred rather than read, and it cannot show you the line in your brief a finding came from. StudyRef quotes the requirement wording behind every finding, and reports what it could not check instead of filling the gap.

They are complements, not rivals: two of the four are StudyRef's own free tools, and the sensible order is usually to write with a generator, tidy the list with a checker, check your word count, and then run the whole thing against the brief.

Your assignment is not stored

An unsubmitted assignment is sensitive, and the free checker treats it that way. Your documents are held in memory long enough to run the comparison, the result is sent back to your browser, and nothing is written to a database or a file. No account is attached to the request, no copy is kept, and StudyRef's analytics receive only counts — never your text, your file names or your requirements.

The free anonymous check also makes no external request of any kind: no AI service, no publisher database, nothing. Your documents are compared against each other, on StudyRef's server, and that is the whole journey.

How to check an assignment yourself

Everything the checker does can be done by hand, and it is worth knowing how — both to understand what a result means and to catch the things no tool settles. These guides cover the method.

How to check an assignment against its requirements
Turn a brief written in prose into a list you can tick off, and work out which requirements a machine can settle and which need your judgement.
Assignment checklist before submission
The last sweep before you upload: word count, structure, citations, references and sources, with how to check each one by hand.
How to check in-text citations against a reference list
Find citations with no reference, references nothing cites, and the author and year mismatches that survive a read-through.
How to check if a source supports a claim
A source can be real, academic and on-topic and still not support the sentence citing it. Here is how to tell, and what to do when you cannot.
How to check your assignment against the rubric
Which criteria have a definite answer, which are the marker's judgement, what weight does and does not tell you, and why a predicted grade is the wrong output.