What Is Contract Cheating? Definition, Examples, and Global Data
Contract cheating — paying someone to complete academic work and submitting it as your own — is estimated to affect millions of students worldwide. Here is what it is, how it works, and what the data shows about its global prevalence.
TL;DR
Contract cheating is when a student submits work completed by someone else for payment. It is estimated to affect 5–16% of students globally. Only Australia, UK, and Ireland have specific laws against it.
TL;DR
Contract cheating is submitting work completed by a paid third party as your own. It affects an estimated 7–16% of students globally. Only Australia, Ireland, and the UK have specific laws against it. The Academic Misconduct Index estimates it is most prevalent in China, Colombia, Argentina, and Greece.
Definition
Contract cheating is a form of academic misconduct in which a student arranges for a third party — usually a commercial essay mill service or freelance writer — to produce academic work, which the student then submits for assessment as if it were their own.
The term was introduced by Clarke and Lancaster in 2006 to distinguish this from traditional plagiarism (copying existing work) because contract cheating produces original content that cannot be detected by conventional plagiarism detection software.
How it works
The typical process:
- A student visits an essay mill website and uploads their assignment brief
- They receive a price quote based on subject, length, and deadline
- Payment is made (typically via credit card or cryptocurrency)
- A writer — often a graduate student or academic in a lower-income country — completes the work
- The student submits the work with their name on it
Prices typically range from £50 to £500 for undergraduate work, rising to several thousand pounds for doctoral dissertations.
How widespread is it?
Newton's 2018 systematic review of 65 studies covering 54,514 students found an average self-reported rate of 7.3% for contract cheating specifically. More recent studies suggest rates may have increased since the availability of AI writing tools — though the boundary between AI assistance and contract cheating has become blurred.
The Academic Misconduct Index D1 scores for 2026 suggest country-level estimates ranging from approximately 27% (Norway) to 60%+ (China, Pakistan, Russia) of students having used contract cheating services at some point in their academic career.
Which countries have banned it?
Only three countries have passed specific legislation:
- Ireland — Qualifications and Quality Assurance Act amendment (2019)
- Australia — Education Services for Overseas Students amendment (2020)
- United Kingdom — Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act provisions (2022)
In these countries, operating an essay mill service is a criminal offence. Australia's penalties reach AUD 100,000 for companies. The legislation targets the supply side — making it illegal to provide the service — rather than targeting students directly.
The major essay mill brands
Research by Thomas Lancaster (Coventry University) and Robert Clarke has identified hundreds of active essay mill services. The highest-traffic brands globally include EduBirdie, EssayShark, PapersOwl, GradeMiners, UK Essays, and MyAssignmentHelp.
These companies operate in legal grey zones in most countries, often registering in jurisdictions with permissive commercial law while serving students globally.
Why detection is hard
Traditional plagiarism detection (Turnitin, iThenticate) works by comparing submitted text against a database of existing content. Contract cheating produces original text — it has never been submitted before — so it passes these checks.
Detection methods that do work include:
- Stylometric analysis — comparing the writing style, vocabulary, and sentence patterns of the suspicious work against other authenticated samples from the same student
- Oral examination — asking students to defend their work verbally
- Metadata analysis — examining document properties for evidence of third-party authorship
- Intelligence — essay mill companies operating under legal pressure have provided student lists to regulators
What the AMI measures
The AMI's D1 dimension (Contract Cheating) draws on three data sources: Google Trends search volume for contract cheating and essay mill keywords, essay mill brand name search data, and an essay mill market presence score based on 22 known high-traffic services and their documented primary target markets.
These are combined with country-adjusted literature estimates to produce a D1 score for all 39 countries. D1 carries a weight of 19.5% in the overall P-Score calculation — the highest weight of any dimension, reflecting its estimated prevalence and the severity of harm to credential integrity.
Further reading
Related
Frequently asked questions
What is contract cheating?
Contract cheating is when a student pays a third party — typically an essay mill company or freelance writer — to complete academic work (essays, dissertations, assignments, exams) and then submits that work as their own. It is considered a serious form of academic misconduct because the student receives a qualification they did not earn.
Is contract cheating illegal?
In most countries, contract cheating is not specifically illegal, though it violates university regulations. Australia (2020), Ireland (2019), and the United Kingdom (2022) are the only countries to have passed specific laws criminalising essay mill services. In other countries, providing or using such services may constitute fraud under general law but is rarely prosecuted.
How common is contract cheating?
Studies estimate between 5% and 16% of students have used contract cheating services at least once. Newton's 2018 systematic review of 65 studies (n=54,514) found an average self-reported rate of 7.3%. The Academic Misconduct Index estimates country-level rates ranging from under 30% to over 60% of students based on multiple data sources.
How do universities detect contract cheating?
Detection is difficult because essay mill work is original — it does not appear in plagiarism databases. Detection methods include stylometric analysis (comparing writing style with known samples), viva voce examinations, inconsistencies between assignment quality and other work, and intelligence from essay mill companies under legal pressure.
What are essay mills?
Essay mills are companies that produce academic work to order. They typically offer essays, dissertations, lab reports, and exam answers across all subjects and academic levels. Major essay mill brands include EduBirdie, EssayShark, PapersOwl, and GradeMiners, though hundreds of services exist globally.
How to cite this article
APA: Booth, F. (2026). What Is Contract Cheating? Definition, Examples, and Global Data. Academic Misconduct Index. https://academicmisconductindex.com/blog/what-is-contract-cheating
BibTeX: @misc{booth2026what, author={Booth, Francisco}, title={What Is Contract Cheating? Definition, Examples, and Global Data}, year={2026}, url={https://academicmisconductindex.com/blog/what-is-contract-cheating}}
Francisco Booth
Independent researcher, founder of the Academic Misconduct Index
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