UniRubric

UniRubric is a higher-education assessment tool for lecturers and institutions that want AI help with rubric-based marking while retaining academic control. It is a stronger fit for review-led grading than for fully automated assessment, and its costs depend on whether marking is bought by lecturer or institution.

Overview

Lecturers can upload rubrics in DOCX, PDF, or plain text and add student work individually or as a class. UniRubric drafts rubric-anchored grades with quoted evidence, but each grade remains a draft until a lecturer reviews, edits, and approves it. That makes it useful where staff want assistance preparing feedback without delegating the final decision.

The platform supports analytic and holistic rubrics, AI assistance, and bulk scoring. Faculty leads also get a dashboard for comparing rubric calibration across markers, with tools to draft a meeting agenda and schedule a calibration meeting. These broader coordination features matter most to departments, rather than a lecturer seeking only a personal marking aid.

Key features

• Evidence-backed drafts: Quoted evidence gives lecturers material to check against rubric criteria during review. Mandatory approval preserves a human decision point, but also means the product does not remove the need for lecturer oversight.
• Class and individual workflows: Staff can add submissions one at a time or as a class, and bulk scoring supports larger marking tasks. Rubrics can be supplied in common document formats or plain text.
• Institutional LMS connections: The institutional product supports Canvas, Moodle, and Blackboard through LTI 1.3, with Assignment & Grade Services in active rollout. Institutional plans also cover Brightspace integration. This makes it more relevant to campuses integrating marking into an LMS than to buyers seeking a standalone grading workflow.
• Data and access controls: Customer data, submissions, rubrics, and grading runs are pinned to Sydney, with no cross-region replication under standard operating conditions. The maker says data is encrypted in transit with TLS 1.3 and at rest with AES-256, including per-tenant column encryption for sensitive student identifiers. Customer work is not used to train or fine-tune models.
• Retention and support boundaries: Deleted assignments are hard-deleted from production within 24 hours and removed from backups within 35 days, while grading-run audit logs remain for seven years. Staff access customer data only through institution-opened support tickets, logged in the audit trail and limited to data the institution directs them to.
• Compliance posture: The security page describes alignment with the AU Privacy Act, GDPR, FERPA, and TEQSA. SOC 2 Type I is a Q4 2026 roadmap target, not a current certification.

Pricing

UniRubric uses a freemium model, with paid plans starting at $15/mo. The free allowance is narrow; paid choices range from occasional top-ups to recurring lecturer subscriptions and institution-sized allocations.

• Lecturer Free — free: One lifetime marking job, full rubric-anchored output, approval before release, and PDF export, with no credit card required. It is suitable for a single trial run, not ongoing marking.
• Top-up packs — $1, paid once: Extra runs beyond the free lecturer job or Premium allowance are sold in small packs, with no charge without sign-off. This suits occasional overflow without a subscription.
• Lecturer Premium · monthly — $15 a month: Includes 15 runs per calendar month, $1 per extra run via top-up packs, six-month rollover, priority queue, and cancellation any time. It fits lecturers with regular monthly marking who value flexibility.
• Lecturer Premium · annual — $180 a year: Paid up front for 15 runs per month, $1 per extra run via top-up packs, and six-month rollover; renewal can be cancelled any time. It carries the same monthly run allocation as the monthly option but commits payment for a year.
• Institutional Light — $9 a year, billed per student per term: The annual marking line item scales by student count and terms per year, with 10 runs per student per term. Teacher account services cost $18/month/account, and local tax is added to the formal quote. It is the lowest-run institutional tier, but the teacher-account charge adds a separate recurring cost.
• Institutional Standard — $15 a year, billed per student per term: Provides 25 runs per student per term, with the same scaling by students and terms, $18/month/account teacher services, and local tax added to the formal quote. It suits institutions needing more marking capacity than Light.
• Institutional Heavy — $25 a year, billed per student per term: Provides 60 runs per student per term, with the same scaling, teacher-account fees, and tax treatment. It is aimed at heavier institutional use, but its total depends on student and term counts as well as teacher accounts.

The free plan and top-ups minimize commitment but offer limited predictable capacity. Lecturer Premium is simpler for recurring individual use; institutional tiers provide per-student term quotas and LMS integration, while adding account charges to the marking line item.

Platforms

UniRubric is available on web and through an API. Institutional LMS integration supports Canvas, Moodle, and Blackboard, with Assignment & Grade Services in active rollout; institutional plans also include Brightspace integration.

Who it's for

UniRubric is best suited to lecturers who want rubric-anchored drafts and quoted evidence but expect to review and approve every grade. Faculty leads may find the calibration dashboard useful for coordinating marking across staff. Universities that need LMS-connected workflows and region-pinned data have a stronger institutional case, while anyone wanting grades released without lecturer intervention should look elsewhere.

Pros and cons

• Pros: Quoted evidence accompanies draft grades, making rubric review more grounded than an unsupported score.
• Pros: Lecturer approval is required before release, keeping the final grading decision with teaching staff.
• Pros: Calibration tools, bulk scoring, and institutional LMS connections extend the product beyond one-at-a-time lecturer use.
• Cons: The free lecturer allowance is only one lifetime marking job, so it does not support continued free use.
• Cons: Institutional costs scale by students and terms, with an additional $18/month/account for teacher services and local tax on formal quotes.
• Cons: Premium lecturer plans include 15 runs per month; larger needs require $1 top-ups, while heavy institutional use requires a higher tier.
• Cons: SOC 2 Type I remains a roadmap target for Q4 2026, so institutions requiring that certification now may not find it suitable.

Alternatives

For a broader comparison, see Rubric Software.

• Gradescope is worth considering if you want a free plan with question-by-question grading, dynamic rubrics, assignment statistics, regrade requests, and data export across Android, iOS, and web.
• GradeBoard may suit web users seeking a free monthly allowance: its Free plan includes 10 learner submissions per month, limited rubric uploads, annotated DOCX downloads, basic analytics, 30-day retention, and email support.
• OpenRubric is an option for buyers who prefer self-hosted software or web access; its partner event offer provides one event at no cost in exchange for sponsor recognition and permission for an anonymized case study.
• RubiStar is a free web-based alternative for educational use, though rubrics may be deleted if used personally or commercially.
• Rubrical is an alternative to explore through a demo, pricing discussion, or pilot.
• ComPAIR is a free, self-hosted and web-based alternative.
• iRubric is a freemium web-based alternative.
• Rubric IQ may fit buyers wanting non-recurring credit purchases: its Individual Teacher plan starts at A$40, paid once for 40 credits, with no recurring fees and credits that do not expire.

Verdict

Choose UniRubric if you teach or lead a higher-education team that wants AI-prepared, evidence-backed rubric grades while keeping approval firmly with lecturers. Its review-first workflow, calibration tools, and institutional connections are the main reasons to pick it. Look elsewhere if you need substantial free use, fully automated grade release, or a current SOC 2 Type I certification.