Who Can See Your Turnitin Similarity Report? The 4 Availability Settings Explained

Turnitin gives instructors four ways to release a Similarity Report to students: immediately, after the assignment is graded, after the due date, or never. Which one applies is decided at the assignment level by your instructor — not by Turnitin, and not by the size or content of your file. If a report is missing, grayed out, or only appears later, the first question is which of the four settings your assignment uses.

Turnitin's student guide, "Accessing the Similarity Report and similarity score for students" (guides.turnitin.com), states the release options exactly:

"The Similarity Report can be made available to students in one of four ways: Immediately: The Similarity Report is available to students immediately upon submission. After the assignment is graded: The Similarity Report is available to students after the instructor has graded the assignment. After the due date: The Similarity Report is available to students after the assignment due date. Never: The Similarity Report is never available to students."

Two of these are easy to confirm yourself. If your assignment shows "Report generated on due date" or feedback is delayed, that is the after-due-date option at work. If you have been graded but still cannot open a report, the instructor may have chosen never — which is also the setting behind a slashed paper icon (more on that below).

One sentence in the same guide changes how you read the whole situation:

"Please note that the report availability settings only control when students can view the report. The report is still generated for the instructor at the time of submission."

Translation: if your instructor chose after-due-date or never, the Similarity Report was still generated when you submitted — your instructor can open it right away. "I can't see it" never means "it doesn't exist." It means the instructor's setting reserves it, and only the instructor can release it. If you are in an academic-integrity discussion, the report already exists even if you have never seen it, so the right move is to ask which report it is (see our guide on AI vs. similarity reports for how to distinguish them once you get it).

The report's visual state in the Similarity column maps one-to-one to the settings:

• Grayed-out icon: Turnitin's instructor-side page ("Interpreting the Similarity Report") says "Similarity Reports that have not yet finished generating are represented by a grayed out icon in the Similarity column." The student guide adds the same idea in plain terms.
• Slash through the paper icon: the student guide describes it as "a slash through the paper icon indicates that the instructor has turned off student access to the Similarity Report" — that is the _never_ setting, shown as a physical state.
• Dash in the Similarity column: "If the submission shows a dash in the Similarity column the Similarity Report is still being generated."

So the icon is a settings readout, not a progress meter. A gray or dashed icon may mean processing (see our guide on how long reports take for the 10–15 minute and 24-hour windows), while a slash means your instructor turned off access. Students often treat all three as "my report is stuck"; only the first two are about processing at all.

Turnitin's help center page "My students can't see their Similarity Reports" lists the causes in order:

"The most common cause is the release of the Similarity Report to students is turned off at the assignment level."

"If the assignment is set to release the Similarity Report to students after the due date, student won't see it until that date passes."

"If the assignment is set to release the Similarity Report to students after the assignment is graded, students will see the report once the assignment has been graded."

"If the Similarity Report release is left at its default setting of Immediate, student reports will be processed in batches. Reports will be viewable as each batch processes... typically within 10-20 minutes."

Even on _immediate_, processing happens in batches and can take 10–20 minutes — a real (but short) wait. If you submitted minutes ago, the honest answer may simply be "wait a few minutes and refresh." If you submitted hours or days ago and the report never appeared, you are looking at a settings issue, which only the instructor can change.

If the assignment accepts resubmissions, which report appears matters. Canvas's official FAQ on Similarity Report settings states:

"If the assignment allows multiple submissions, the Similarity Report will be available for the most recent submission and will be based on the highest similarity document."

So the report you see corresponds to the submission with the highest similarity — not the average, and not necessarily the latest file's own score. That is consistent with Turnitin's single-download rule for the PDF (see our guide on downloading a Similarity Report PDF for what you get).

• Instructors: always — the report is generated at submission regardless of the release setting.
• Students: only when the instructor's setting allows it (immediately, after grading, after due date, or never).
• Anyone else: Turnitin doesn't put your report or paper in a public space. A match with another student's paper goes through a controlled request process (see our guide on paper view requests) — a match seen in an inbox is not the same as the paper being readable.

The two permissions to keep separate: _can the student see the report_ (this article) and _can the student see the AI writing report_ — AI reports are a different permission entirely (see our guide on whether students can see their AI score).

A missing or grayed-out Similarity Report is a settings question, not a mystery. Turnitin's four release options — immediately, after grading, after the due date, never — are set by the instructor, and the report existed at submission time either way. Read the icon first: a slash means access is turned off, gray or dash means it is still generating (10–20 minutes in batches, up to 24 hours for resubmissions). If you genuinely need the report and the setting is not going to change, the productive move is a clear request to the instructor — not assuming the system failed.