What Do the Colors on Turnitin's Similarity Report Mean? (Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red)

The similarity icon color is a percentage-range map: blue = no matching text, green = one word to 24% matching, yellow = 25-49%, orange = 50-74%, red = 75-100%. Those bands come straight from Turnitin's official student guide. The color is shorthand for the number, not a judgment about the paper — and the scheme can vary by integration, so the same score may show a different hue in Feedback Studio versus SimCheck.

Turnitin's student guide, "Understanding the similarity score for students," gives the exact ranges:

"For classic assignments, the color of the report icon corresponds with the similarity score of the paper. The percentage range is 0% to 100%. The possible similarity ranges are: Blue: No matching text Green: One word to 24% matching text Yellow: 25-49% matching text Orange: 50-74% matching text Red: 75-100% matching text"

The number is still on the icon — the color is an at-a-glance band, not a replacement for the percentage. Turnitin's instructor-side page ("Interpreting the Similarity Report") states the same five ranges, so students and instructors are reading the same map.

A grayed-out icon in the Similarity column is not a sixth similarity color. Turnitin's student guide lists the two reasons a score disappears:

"If a similarity score does not appear under the Similarity column, there could be two reasons: Your instructor turned off student access to the Similarity Report The Similarity Report is still being generated and will be updated once it has finished processing"

The instructor-side page adds the resubmission rule:

"Overwritten or resubmitted papers may not generate a new Similarity Report for a full 24 hours."

So gray means "no report right now" — either your instructor has hidden the report, or it is still processing (including the 24-hour wait that applies to resubmissions). It is a state, not a band. If you see gray, don't read it as "safe" or "dangerous"; read it as "not available yet" (see our guide on how long reports take for the timing).

The student guide adds a warning that most students never hear:

"The color scheme used for similarity scores may vary depending on the integration. This is expected and does not affect the results."

The same page shows a concrete example — SimCheck's My Files view swaps the two lowest bands:

"Green: 0% matching text / Blue: 1-24% matching text / Yellow: 25-49% / Orange: 50-74% / Red: 75-100%"

So in SimCheck, a 0% score is green, and 1-24% is blue — the exact inverse of the classic bands. Before you judge a score by its color, check which product generated the report. The same percentage-range logic is a map, but the map's colors are not universal.

Turnitin's blog is explicit about what the color does not mean:

"It's not true that the color of a student's similarity score, found in the assignment inbox, indicates the amount of plagiarism uncovered by Turnitin. Similar text does not equate to plagiarism."

The student guide says the same mechanism first:

"We calculate this by dividing the total words in a submission by the amount of words matched to outside sources."

"It is likely your submission will match against some of our database. If you've used quotes and references correctly, that will still be highlighted as a match."

Matched text is counted by words, quotes and proper references included. A green score can still be a fully cited paper, and a red score can be a well-written paper that matches a repository entry — the color is an investigation starting point, not a verdict.

Practical reading order when the report is available:

• Read the number, then the color: the percentage is the precise value; the color only groups it into a band.
• Confirm which product you are in before interpreting the hue — classic bands differ from SimCheck bands.
• For classic assignments: blue = no match at all, green = a small share (1-24%), yellow = a quarter to half (25-49%), orange = half to three quarters (50-74%), red = three quarters or more (75-100%).
• Gray icon = report not ready or not allowed, not a band about your paper.

The similarity colors are a percentage map with five official bands — blue (0), green (1-24%), yellow (25-49%), orange (50-74%), red (75-100%) — plus a gray state that means "report not available", not a sixth color. The scheme can be swapped in other integrations (SimCheck runs green for 0%), so always confirm the product before reading the hue. And the color never equals a plagiarism verdict: matched text includes correctly cited quotes, and the score is matched words divided by total words. Treat the icon as a band around a number, and the number as a starting point for investigation, not a label on your integrity.