A ZeroGPT alternative where free buys a real report.
Three named verdicts and a score on every sentence — not one percentage.
50 free scans a day · 2,500 words per scan · text is scored in memory and never stored
Why this page exists
Free should still mean a report you can argue with
ZeroGPT made the free, instant AI check a habit: paste text, read a percentage. That habit is useful and incomplete. A headline figure does not tell you which sentences earned it, and a number in the forties is the tool declining to decide. markhuman keeps the free and the instant — 50 scans a day, 2,500 words each, no account — and changes what comes back: a named verdict, with a score on every sentence.
We refuse to score fewer than 50 words. Below that length, any detector's output is closer to noise than to evidence. A tool that confidently scores a two-sentence paste is not being generous; it is being unserious. Confidence rises with length, and mixed documents (a model drafted, a person edited) get their own verdict rather than a percentage you have to interpret.
Will this agree with ZeroGPT on the same text? Sometimes. Detectors are different classifiers trained on different corpora with thresholds drawn in different places. Disagreement is normal. Where two tools split, the honest reading is that the text is genuinely ambiguous and deserves a human look — not that one vendor is lying.
We do not publish head-to-head benchmarks against ZeroGPT or anyone else, and this page contains no accuracy percentage for either tool. Vendor-measured numbers describe the vendor's own test set, not your document. Short passages, non-native English, and heavily edited drafts are hard cases for the entire field, ours included. Text is scored in memory and never stored.
What free gets you
Both tools are free.
The reports are not alike
Free is the right price for an AI check — most people need one at the exact moment a document worries them, not after a procurement cycle. The question that separates free tools is what comes back when you hit the button, because that output is what you will act on.
ZeroGPT
- Returns a headline AI percentage for the pasted text.
- Positioned as a quick consumer check — paste, glance, done.
- The percentage is the product; what to do when it lands mid-range is left to you.
markhuman
- Names one of three verdicts — Human-Written, AI-Assisted, or AI-Generated — instead of leaving a number to interpret.
- Scores every sentence and shades it in place, so you can see which lines earned the verdict.
- Free means free: no account, no card, and your text is scored in memory and never stored.
Neither column above says anything about accuracy — no independent study covers both tools, so any number either of us quoted would be marketing. The comparison that can be made honestly is about the shape of the answer: one figure to interpret yourself, or a verdict with the evidence attached.
The mid-range problem
Where one percentage
quietly gives up
A percentage works at the extremes and abandons you in the middle — and the middle is where the documents people actually worry about tend to land.
Free tools meet the hardest texts
Nobody pastes obvious cases into a free checker. People paste the essay that worries them, the application letter they rewrote five times, the draft a colleague 'cleaned up'. Those are mixed documents — and mixed documents are exactly where a single percentage has the least to say.
The mid-range is not a verdict
A 48% from any detector is the tool declining to decide, dressed as a number. Acting on it — accusing someone, rewriting a clean draft, resubmitting and hoping — means you made the call, not the detector. A named AI-Assisted verdict is the same evidence with the decision actually taken.
Sentences settle arguments
When a result gets challenged — by a teacher, an editor, or the writer themselves — a percentage has nothing more to offer. A report where each sentence carries its own score gives the conversation something concrete to stand on: this line reads generated, these three read human, here is why the verdict landed where it did.
Three verdicts
The answer is a name,
not a threshold
Each scan ends in one of three named categories. The point of naming them is that the middle one — the mixed document — stops being a number you argue about and becomes an answer you can act on.
Human-Written
Rhythm, vocabulary, and structure all sit inside the human range. Not '2% AI' — a positive statement that this reads as one person writing.
AI-Assisted
Both signatures present: a model drafted and a person reworked it, or the reverse. This is the case a lone percentage rounds away — and on real documents it is the most common answer.
AI-Generated
Model output start to finish, including text already pushed through a humanizer — the evasion route the engine is specifically trained against.
What we will not claim
No accuracy percentages on this page
We do not publish head-to-head benchmarks against ZeroGPT or anyone else, and this page contains no accuracy percentage for either tool — vendor-measured numbers describe the vendor's own test set, not your document. No detector is perfect. Short passages, non-native English, and heavily edited drafts are hard cases for the entire field, ours included. Treat any detector's output as evidence to weigh, not proof on its own.
What the report can and cannot tell you is spelled out in full on the AI detector page. If you are comparing more tools, the GPTZero and Originality.ai pages make the same argument against different design centres.
Who a ZeroGPT alternative is for
Same free habit, a report you can defend
If you already paste text into a free checker, the useful comparison is what comes back when you hit the button — not a vendor accuracy number neither of us can stand behind on your document.
You need a mixed document named as mixed
A 48% from any detector is a decline to decide. AI-Assisted is the same evidence with the decision actually taken. Most real pastes live here.
You have to explain the result to someone else
A teacher, an editor, the writer. Sentence scores give the conversation something concrete: this line reads generated, these three read human.
You are pasting unpublished work into a free box
Text here is scored in memory and never stored. That matters more than it sounds: essays, applications, and confidential drafts are exactly what people paste into free checkers.
Not: a guaranteed match with ZeroGPT
Disagreement between detectors is a property of the field. Where they split, the text is ambiguous. Run both if you want; believe neither as proof.
FAQ
Questions about switching
What free covers, why the word minimum exists, and what to make of two free detectors disagreeing.
Is markhuman really free like ZeroGPT?
Yes, and without an account: 50 scans a day at up to 2,500 words per scan, with a 50-word minimum before the engine will score anything. Paid plans exist for longer documents and monthly volume, but the scanner on this page is not a trial and does not expire.
What do I get here that a single AI percentage doesn't give me?
Two things. A named verdict — Human-Written, AI-Assisted, or AI-Generated — so the mixed case is called mixed instead of landing on a number you have to interpret. And a per-sentence score shaded into your own text, so you can see which lines drove the result rather than trusting a headline figure.
Why does the minimum word count matter for a free checker?
Because below a certain length, any detector's output is closer to noise than to evidence — there simply aren't enough words for the statistics to mean anything. We refuse to score fewer than 50 words rather than hand you a confident-looking number we don't believe. A tool that scores a two-sentence paste is not being generous; it is being unserious.
Will markhuman agree with ZeroGPT on the same text?
Sometimes. Detectors are different classifiers trained on different corpora with thresholds drawn in different places, so disagreement between any two tools is normal and expected — it is a property of the field, not a defect of either tool. Where two detectors disagree, the honest reading is that the text is genuinely ambiguous and deserves a human look.
Is my text stored, used for training, or shown to anyone?
No. Text is scored in memory and never stored. That matters more than it sounds for a free tool: the usual price of free is that your data becomes the product, and people paste unpublished essays, application letters, and confidential drafts into these boxes.
Can it catch AI text that was run through a humanizer or paraphraser?
That case is explicitly in the training data — AI text pushed through commercial humanizers and paraphrasers, mirrored against human originals. It remains the hardest case in the field, so read the sentence shading rather than the headline alone on heavily rewritten text, and treat borderline results there with extra care.
Paste the same text into both
Both tools are free, so the comparison costs nothing: run writing you already know the truth about, and see which report you could defend to someone else. 2,500 words per scan, 50 scans a day.