No matter what you’re writing, your content must be unique. When it’s too similar to another piece of content, it can be considered plagiarism. Not to mention, Google doesn’t take too kindly to duplicate content. 

There may be no such thing as a duplicate content penalty, but the visibility of your content will still suffer if it’s too similar to another website’s content (even if it was an honest mistake). This is because Google has to choose between duplicate pages to deliver the one that satisfies searchers’ intent the best. There’s a fair chance that your content won’t end up ranking and, therefore, will have costed you more than it’s worth. 

Paraphrasing tools make it easy to ensure your content is unique and able to perform at its best. Below, we’ll share our picks for the six best paraphrasing tools. But first, let’s dive into everything you need to know about paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing vs. plagiarism: What’s the difference?

Paraphrasing is taking someone else’s ideas and putting them into your own words to create unique content. Plagiarism is when you use someone else’s words, phrases, or ideas without giving credit to the original source—in other words, stealing.

If you think plagiarism only applies to journalistic articles or research papers, think again. When your audience finds out your website, blog, or marketing content isn't original, it can hurt their perception of your brand. 

To avoid plagiarism, make sure that you paraphrase any ideas you didn’t come up with. Rather than just changing one or two words in a phrase, completely reword the content with your own tone, perspective, and opinion to make it unique. 

Also be careful not to borrow so much from others that their ideas make up the majority of your content. Even if you reword the ideas, it’s still plagiarism. 

What if you do want to use exact content, quotes, or phrases from another source? Quoting other resources can lend credibility to your content—but only if you cite your sources properly. Always use quotation marks and give credit to the original source. 

What is a paraphrasing tool?

If you have solid writing skills, it’s possible to paraphrase content on your own. But it can be hard to paraphrase a lot of information when you’re creating content at scale. That’s where paraphrasing tools come in handy!

Paraphrasing tools are also known as content or article spinners, article rewriters, or sentence rephrasers. No matter what you call them, all these tools do the same thing: they paraphrase content to make it unique without changing its meaning.

Content spinners make the process of paraphrasing content quick and painless—no more spending hours on paraphrasing pages upon pages of content. You can put the content into a rewriting tool, and in just a few moments you’ll have a unique passage.

How do paraphrasing tools work? 

To paraphrase is to reword or restate something. So, on a basic level, paraphrasing tools look for synonyms for each word in the text you input. But this can change the meaning of the text. Sometimes it’s so changed it doesn’t make sense anymore. 

To counter this, more advanced tools use artificial intelligence (AI) to interpret and retain the meaning of your original text. Because the AI is trained extensively in language models, these tools paraphrase more naturally. 

Jasper takes this a step further with its lookback feature, available in Boss Mode. With this feature, Jasper “sees” the text that came before the part you want to paraphrase. This context is used to deliver a more accurate output. 

AI does wonders for your efficiency, helping you crank out content faster than you could on your own.

For more on creating content at scale, check out our free AI Content Agency mini-course. In only two hours, you’ll have the know-how to scale your content marketing efforts, whether you’re a freelance writer or building a content agency.

Paraphrasing examples to help you get started

It’s easy to understand what paraphrasing is in theory, but what does it actually look like in practice? Let’s dive into some paraphrasing examples created using Jasper’s content templates.

We took the original content from our blog post “7 SEO Copywriting Tips and 3 Tools to Help You Rank Better,” and put it into the Content Improver—a tool that rewrites content to make it more interesting, creative, and engaging:

On the left you can see the two original paragraphs from the blog post. We chose a friendly voice, and put it through our AI-driven paraphrasing tool. On the right you’ll see three different paraphrased options.

Here’s another example of paraphrasing using the same blog post. This time, we used the Explain It to a Child feature, which rephrases text to make it easier to understand: 

This is a great template for anyone creating content in a technical industry. For instance, a medical or finance company could use it to create a reader-friendly blog post out of a jargon-filled manual or guide.

What are the pros and cons of using a rephrasing tool?

As with any business tool, using a tool for paraphrasing has pros and cons. Weigh the pros and cons to see if using a rephrasing tool makes sense for you.

Here are some of the pros:

• You can change the structure of content while retaining its original meaning. And you can do it without racking your brain for the perfect phrasing.
• Paraphrase generators often produce revised content in seconds. This is much faster than manual paraphrasing.
• Online paraphrasing tools can process a lot more content than a human can, in a fraction of the time. They make it easier to rewrite content at scale.
• Paraphrasing tools help ensure your content is unique. They make it easier to avoid plagiarism and its negative impacts on your SEO and reputation. 
• These tools are a fraction of the cost of hiring professional writers to write or rewrite content.

However, not every paraphrasing tool is created equal. Here are some of the cons you may experience when using this type of tool:

• Some tools will just replace words with synonyms. This could make it hard to read and understand the new content.
• Many tools don't take your tone of voice into account. This means you’ll have to revise the content to fit your brand voice.
• Simpler online paraphrasing tools don’t offer many options for customization. For example, they may not allow you to simplify the content or make it more creative.

The 6 best paraphrasing tools for creating content at scale

There are many tools you can use to paraphrase content at scale, all of which have benefits and challenges. We’ve chosen the six best paraphrasing tools based on usability and effectiveness.

1. Jasper

Jasper is one of the leading web-based AI writing tools, and for good reason. The GPT-3 AI model that powers Jasper has read millions of blog posts, websites, and other types of content to learn how people write. This allows Jasper to imitate human language and writing techniques to produce new or rewritten content.

We might be a little biased, but we think Jasper is one of the best paraphrasing tools on the market. It offers a comprehensive set of tools and functions, allowing you to generate all types of content with the help of AI. Understanding how Jasper works can help you get the most out of it.

One great thing about Jasper is that it always produces original content. You don’t have to worry about plagiarism. Whether you’re using Jasper to write or rephrase content, you know it’s providing you with unique phrasing you won’t find anywhere else.

What’s more, Jasper can improve upon the content you input. Here’s another look at the Content Improver template:

Besides templates, you can also leverage the Command functionality in Boss Mode. In a blank Jasper document, paste in the content you want to rephrase: 

Then, tell Jasper in plain language what to do. Here, we’ve used the command, “Rephrase the above in an encouraging tone of voice.” (When you try this, you can swap the tone as needed to match your brand. To make sure you choose the right one, check out our tone of voice tips.) 

Then, we used Command + Shift + Enter to execute the command. Here’s the paraphrased text Jasper gave us: 

See how quick and simple it can be to rephrase text? These are just a couple examples of the key features you can use in Jasper to refresh old content quickly, or to repurpose your content into other formats for different distribution channels. 

2. Paraphrase-Online

Paraphrase-Online is a free app you can use to paraphrase up to 1,000 characters at a time. It uses an algorithm that rewords sentences, phrases, and expressions by exchanging words for synonyms.

This tool converts any text into unique content that retains the meaning of the original text. Just put your text into the “Text Before” box, hit the “Paraphrase!” button, and voilà—your rephrased content will appear in the “Text After” box in a few seconds.

One of the most helpful features Paraphrase-Online offers is the ability to change words in the “Text After” box. If you don’t like a synonym used in the paraphrasing process, you can change it to a different word that means the same thing. All you need to do is click on the word and choose the synonym that you like best.

While this tool is certainly easy (and free) to use and will save you the time of having to manually paraphrase large chunks of text, it is limited in its capabilities. The content will be unique, but it may not necessarily improve on the original. It may also require more editing than some of the other tools.

Also, you can only paraphrase 1,000 characters at a time. If your content goes beyond this, you may need to use the tool several times for a single piece, which can slow down the process.

Paraphrase-Online is best for rewording shorter content like isolated paragraphs or email content. This may also be an ideal tool for students who need to paraphrase research for papers.

3. Spinbot

Spinbot is another free tool that rewrites the text you input, turning it into unique content that you can use without fear of plagiarism.

One benefit of Spinbot is that it allows you to input up to 10,000 characters. Instead of inputting text paragraph by paragraph, you can rephrase large chunks all at once.

Spinbot gives you the option to spin capitalized words, which is only recommended if you don’t have any proper nouns like names of people or places. You can also ask it to ignore words that you don’t want it to rephrase.

After putting your text in the text box, click the “Basic Paraphrase!” button, and your rewritten text appears to the right. (Alternatively, you can enter text and select “Advanced Paraphrase.” You’ll be redirected to QuillBot—another tool on this list.) 

While this rephrasing tool isn’t super versatile, it is free and very easy to use. This makes it great for students or professionals who only need the occasional rephrase.

4. Paraphrase Online

Not to be confused with Paraphrase-Online, this free paraphrasing tool offers different features than the hyphenated alternative mentioned above. Paraphrase Online has five modes, including one for removing plagiarism and another for fixing sentence structure. You can also choose from six languages besides English, including Spanish and French. 

Here’s the output we got using Human mode in English:

Unlike more advanced paraphrasing tools, this one replaces individual words with synonyms. It doesn’t consider the context in which the original words were used. So, as you can see, it could use a couple tweaks. 

However, Paraphrase Online still does a decent job of getting across the point of the original text. Editing the rephrased content would still likely be faster than paraphrasing manually. Especially if you’re working with longer texts.

Plus, after each rephrase, you could run the content through Paraphrase Online again. Using a different mode would make the content even more unique. For example, you could start with Human mode, copy and paste that output, and then use Remove Plagiarism mode.

5. CopyAI

Copy.ai—an AI writing tool similar to Jasper—doesn’t have a tool specifically for paraphrasing, but it does have a Freestyle tool. 

With it, you can tell the artificial intelligence:

• What you want to create (or, in this case, what type of content you want to paraphrase) 
• What the content will cover, as well as any instructions for the AI
• What tone you’re going for—which can be a great way to create fresher, more unique content

For example, we entered “Blog post” as the content type and then pasted in a portion of a blog post with instructions to paraphrase it. In the right-hand pane, you can see three of the rewritten options we were given: 

As you can see, the software does a great job of retaining the meaning of the original text, while also writing in a natural, engaging way. 

And, unlike alternatives that only give you one version at a time, Copy.ai gives you five paraphrased variations of whatever text you input. You can then generate even more based on which versions you like the best, so you can quickly find one that works for you without too much editing. 

6. Quillbot

Finally, there’s QuillBot, which also has some helpful features for creating rephrased, unique content. 

Here are some of QuillBot’s highlights:

• Ability to input up to 125 words in the free version
• Choice between Standard and Fluency mode
• Flexibility to make fewer changes to synonyms for higher accuracy or, more changes for an output that’s less tied to the original

In the settings, you can also choose whether to use contractions or paraphrase quotations.

One really helpful feature is that QuillBot color-codes rephrased content. It shows which words changed, where sentence structure was modified, and the longest passages of unchanged words. This is a quick way to gauge how different the output is from the original text, allowing you to spot portions that need further editing. 

With the Premium version, you can choose from even more modes, including Shorten, Expand, and Creative. Plus, you can add more original text and even control word changes. 

Choosing the right paraphrasing tool

Ultimately, the right rewording tool for you depends on your needs. If you just need to paraphrase a couple of small chunks of text per week, a simple free tool will be the best option. 

If you need to paraphrase larger pieces of content, or do it at a high volume, a more comprehensive tool like Jasper will be a better choice. 

How paraphrasing with Jasper improves your writing process

What makes Jasper so useful? There are many benefits to using our software, but we think these three alone are worth the price of admission:

• Jasper provides plagiarism-free content and built-in plagiarism detection (via your Copyscape account).
• It helps you write and paraphrase content at scale, allowing you to create high-volume, high-quality content ten times faster.
• Jasper can generate multiple variations of your ideas or existing texts to help you beat writer’s block.

Want to try Jasper for yourself? Sign up for your 5-day free trial, and you can be on your way to paraphrasing content in just two minutes!