How Winston AI Fares in AI Content Detection

Now that we’ve covered the “What is Winston AI?” portion of the review, let’s get straight to testing its AI detection capabilities. We decided to generate short essay snippets with ChatGPT and Claude and run a scan on a piece of human-written content to compare the results. All the snippets concerned the same topic: how to end a college essay.

ChatGPT’s snippet didn’t fool Winston AI. Even though the tool highlighted some sentences as “uncertain”, the overall score was zero:

Claude’s output produced similar results:

Now, it was the human-written content’s turn to get scanned. The piece of the human-written content was accurately identified as such:

So, based on our tests, Winston AI seems to distinguish between AI-generated content well enough. We tinkered with it a bit more, feeding other snippets into the tool, and got similar results.

What’s more, Winston AI managed to properly distinguish between human-written and slightly edited AI-generated parts when we ran a check on an AI + human text sample:

Winston AI’s Customer Support

Of course, our Winston AI detector review wouldn’t be complete without looking into its support options. Unfortunately, the main way to contact Winston AI is via its contact form or email address. So, as you can imagine, responses might take some time.

If you need help with run-of-the-mill questions, dropping a line to customer support isn’t really the way to go. Customer support is there to help you with billing issues, severe bugs, etc. For questions on how Winston AI works or how it protects your data, you better check out the tool’s knowledge base:

While it’s always good to have a knowledge base, some of its entries could use updating – most of them were last updated two years ago. For example, this answer is obviously outdated as the website’s main page states Winston AI can boast 99.98% accuracy:

That said, a few knowledge base entries that concern more hands-on topics like account management are surprisingly in-depth and provide a step-by-step guide. Here’s one example:

Winston AI & File Scanning

Now, is Winston AI accurate when scanning files for AI content? We decided to investigate. To that end, we ran checks on two kinds of files: a .docx text with machine-recognizable text and an image which would require optical character recognition (OCR).

The .docx file posed no problem for Winston AI. The tool quickly imported all the text to the box for the scan – all we had to do was click Scan text after that.

When it came to images, however, the process wasn’t nearly as smooth or effective. We decided to start with a screenshot of a Wikipedia article. Unfortunately, Winston AI failed to recognize any text from the file at all:

The same happened to a different image describing differences between artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning:

So much for optical character recognition.

P.S. You can also import text from a URL. We tested the feature using the tool’s main page, and the result was quite disappointing: headings and subheading were missing from the imported text. Some whitespace characters were present, too.

Winston AI Pricing: How Much Does It Cost?

Let’s start with the most pressing question: Is Winston AI free? The answer is “not exactly.” Winston AI gives you 2,000 credits for free to use within 14 days. However, after this trial period ends, you’ll be prompted to switch to a paid plan.

AI detection will consume one credit per word; plagiarism checker – 2 credits per word.

The free plan doesn’t include advanced plagiarism detection or writing feedback. However, you can still benefit from the readability score, AI detection, and paraphrased content detection.

As for the paid plans, they start at $18/month if billed monthly:

If you want to save a buck, however, you can opt for the annual billing. In this case, subscription prices start at $12/month:

The starter paid plan, Essential, gives you 80,000 credits per month, which means you can check 80,000 words for AI content or 40,000 words for plagiarism. You also get access to writing feedback.

However, advanced plagiarism detection is available only to users on Advanced and Elite plans. Plus, you remain limited to 100,000 characters per scan on any paid plan.

You can get 1,000 extra free credits if you install Winston AI’s Chrome or Firefox extension.

Security & Privacy

Winston AI states that it doesn’t store backups of your scanned text or uploaded files after the check is over. Of course, if you don’t delete the text after the scan, it’ll remain accessible – but your data will be fully encrypted. Winston AI also states it doesn’t share your scanned texts or uploaded files with any third parties.

What’s more, Winston AI also doesn’t use the scanned content to improve its detection capabilities. So, you don’t run the risk of your content becoming a part of the tool’s training dataset.

When it comes to security, Winston AI has two certifications to show for its efforts. One, Winston AI is SOC 2 Type 1 certified, meaning it maintains high data security and confidentiality standards. Two, Winston AI complies with CASA Type 2 standards, which concern cloud application security measures.

As for payment data protections, all transactions are handled by Stripe and PayPal. These two payment processors are PCI-compliant and invest millions into data security and encryption, so you’re safe on that front, too.

Is Winston AI User-Friendly?

Overall, Winston AI offers a user-friendly experience. While we were testing the tool for our WinstonAI review, we didn’t spend too much time looking for buttons or specific information. The user flows are smooth and intuitive, so you probably won’t get lost in the interface.

The signup was also quite easy, with Google and Facebook social logins available as an option. You’ll need to verify your email address before starting your trial period, though.

If we had one bone to pick with Winston AI, however, it would do less with its user experience and more with its customer experience. While the tool is supposed to give users 14 days to decide if it’s worth paying for, too many of its features remain locked behind a paywall. Plus, essentials like the plagiarism checker are available only for users on the more expensive plans.

What About Winston AI Plagiarism Checker?

If you want to use Winston AI for free or even on the cheapest subscription plan, we’ll have to give you some bad news: the plagiarism checker isn’t included. What’s more, plagiarism checks essentially cost you more than AI content scans since one word equals two credits instead of one.

That said, there’s something to be said about the convenience of running both checks simultaneously. You just need to click the toggle under the text to add the plagiarism check to the AI content scan.

Overall, the plagiarism check returns the expected results in terms of accuracy, with a list of the matched sources. However, Winston AI doesn’t highlight the supposedly plagiarized sentences in the text on the left – that section remains reserved for the AI prediction map. Without this information, it’d be nearly impossible to improve the text’s originality.

Winston AI at a Glance: Pros & Cons

So, is Winston AI the best AI detector? Well, that depends on what you mean by “the best.” If you’re looking for an accurate AI content scanner, Winston AI does deserve the title – it must have improved since mist user reviews were published. But if you want good value for the money… You might want to look elsewhere.

Here’s our quick recap of the tool’s main advantages and drawbacks:

Pros:

✅ High AI content detection accuracy for AI, human-written and human + AI content ✅ Free 14-day trial with 2,000 credits ✅ Convenient social login options ✅ Security certifications (SOC 2, CASA) and solid privacy policy

Cons:

❌ OCR didn’t work on any images we uploaded to the tool ❌ Plagiarism results don’t highlight unoriginal sentences, making it next to impossible to fix plagiarism easily ❌ URL content import fails to extract all text from the page ❌ Many Essential plan features are unavailable during the trial period ❌ Plagiarism checks aren’t available on the cheapest subscription plan