# GPTZero

18 Hacker News commenters recommended GPTZero and 31 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it as a strong signal for spotting likely AI-generated text, often ranking it above other detectors. Critics say it is not perfect and produces false positives on human writing.

## Why people recommend it

- Strong signal for AI-written text (6 comments): "GPTZero is by no means perfect, but it agreed this was likely generated." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48221293)) "GPTZero is not full-proof but I think it's likely right on this one" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46969335)) "which is not perfect but is pretty spot on quite often" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48862837))
- Better than other detectors (3 comments): "GPTZero is much better at handling humanized outputs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48668729)) "actually GPTZero was the best of the bunch" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46438816)) "I've always found it to be a better judge" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49871692))
- Useful for checking pages and drafts (3 comments): "There is a useful GPTZero-based provenance tool for editors (and readers) to check if a page contains AI-generated text" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271936)) "For the text of the paper, paste any section after the "Introduction" section into https://gptzero.me/" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46940913)) "you should be happy to have a tool that can find them before you publish" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46728485))

## What people warn about

- Flags human-written text as AI (5 comments): "My son has been accused by bullshit AI detection as having used AI, and it has devastated his work quality." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46721343)) "I got a 100% AI generated mark for a post in... 2022, and 2023. Both before AI tools were around." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46438773)) "GPTZero and other AI detectors have far more false positives than correct guesses." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49155118))
- Marketing claims lack evidence (4 comments): "This is a marketing post where they provide no evidence that any of these are hallucinations beyond their own AI tool telling them so" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46740886)) "I think it is true and intentionally vague for marketing purposes. And FWIW, I support the effort writ large" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46735094)) "some of these were included in the dataset mainly to amplify the author's product pitch" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46723555))
- Paywalls and fake scores (2 comments): "I've tried to test their tool as well, but was totally paywalled." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46725314)) "If you upload a large document, they'll give a fake 100% AI rating behind a blur until you pay up" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46728574))
- Inconsistent results, easy to evade (3 comments): "it suggested they're 100% written by a human, tried this article, it says 100% written by AI" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156243)) "GPTZero claimed with 80% confidence that it was human-written but AI polished" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987589)) "It's an extremely easy fence to jump over, as demonstrated by the article." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48766532))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Pangram](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pangram.md): 175 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://gptzero.me/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "GPTZero", https://hackerapproved.com/p/gptzero/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).