20% is the lowest AI score Turnitin shows as a real number. Below that it shows *%. A 20% score is not proof of anything, but it is the point where your faculty starts to see a figure, so it is worth checking which parts of the paper are causing it.
Written by Adithyan, a student who builds PaperCheck. Last updated 22 October 2026.
Turnitin treats scores from 1% to 19% as less reliable and hides them behind *%. From 20% upward it shows the number. So 20% is not a rule about cheating; it is simply the first score that becomes visible.
It depends on your college. Many faculty only look closer at much higher scores, and Turnitin itself says its AI score should not be the only basis for any action. A 20% score usually means a few paragraphs read as AI, not the whole paper.
Find the paragraphs behind the score. Usually it is the introduction, the literature review or the conclusion, where writing tends to be general. Rewrite those parts with details from your own project: what you built, what you measured, what went wrong.
No. It is the lowest score Turnitin displays as a number. What happens next depends on your college's policy.
Turnitin considers low scores less reliable, so it hides the exact value between 1% and 19%.
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PaperCheck is not affiliated with Turnitin, GPTZero or Pangram. Scores from any detector are estimates, not proof.