Want footnote-only?
Use the Chicago Footnote Generator for a focused Notes-Bibliography workflow — full notes, shortened notes, and the matching bibliography entry.
Paste any URL. Get a clean Chicago citation in both Chicago systems — Notes-Bibliography (footnote + bibliography) and Author-Date (parenthetical) — so you can use whichever your assignment requires. Free, no signup.
Tip: Paste the page URL — we'll pull the title, author, site, and publication date automatically.
Chicago has two systems and citing a website looks different in each. Notes-Bibliography (humanities, history, art) uses a footnote in the text and a matching bibliography entry at the end. Author-Date (sciences) uses a parenthetical citation and a reference list. Same source, two formats. Most students who land on a "Chicago website" question end up wanting both, so this generator shows you both.
Notes-Bibliography — first footnote (full form):
1. Daniel Mendelsohn, "What Is Greek Tragedy For?" The New Yorker, March 24, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/03/what-is-greek-tragedy-for.
Notes-Bibliography — shortened note (every later citation):
5. Mendelsohn, "Greek Tragedy."
Notes-Bibliography — bibliography entry (alphabetized list):
Mendelsohn, Daniel. "What Is Greek Tragedy For?" The New Yorker, March 24, 2023. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/03/what-is-greek-tragedy-for.
Author-Date — in-text citation:
(Mendelsohn 2023)
Author-Date — reference list entry:
Mendelsohn, Daniel. 2023. "What Is Greek Tragedy For?" The New Yorker, March 24, 2023. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/03/what-is-greek-tragedy-for.
https://. Period after.Chicago makes the accessed date optional and only recommended when no publication date is available. For dated news articles, blog posts, or government pages, the publication date is enough — don't add an access date. For undated wikis, social profiles, or live data dashboards, add it: … https://www.example.com/page (accessed May 12, 2026). Some disciplines (especially history) require it more often than others; check your assignment.
If your professor said "Chicago" without specifying, it's almost certainly Notes-Bibliography — that's the default for history, philosophy, art, religious studies, and most humanities. Author-Date is the default in the sciences within the Chicago tradition (geology, biology, etc.). Turabian, common in undergraduate work, is essentially Notes-Bibliography for student papers. When in doubt, ask. Mixing the two systems within a single paper is wrong in either direction.
Paste a URL and we read the page metadata — Open Graph tags, schema.org JSON-LD, and standard <meta> author/date fields. The CSL engine renders the appropriate Chicago format for your selected style (Notes-Bibliography or Author-Date). Switch between the two using the style pills at the top of the page; both pull from the same source data.
Notes-Bibliography is the default for humanities (history, philosophy, art, religious studies). Author-Date is the default for sciences within the Chicago tradition. If your professor said "Chicago" without specifying, it's almost certainly Notes-Bibliography. Turabian = Notes-Bibliography for student papers. When in doubt, check the syllabus or ask.
Optional, and only recommended when no publication date is available. For dated news, blog posts, and government pages, the publication date is enough. For undated wikis, social profiles, or live data, add it: (accessed May 12, 2026) at the end of the URL.
Skip the author slot and start with the page title (in quotes) for both notes and the bibliography. In notes, use a shortened title for subsequent references: "Greek Tragedy." If a corporate or organizational author is named anywhere on the page, use that instead — orgs count as authors.
Last name, shortened title (in quotes for articles, italicized for books). Example: Mendelsohn, "Greek Tragedy." Add a page number if relevant. Use the shortened note for every citation after the first one — Chicago no longer recommends ibid.
Notes (first reference): list up to three authors with "and" before the last (Smith, Doe, and Lee). Four or more: first author plus "et al." Bibliography: list up to ten authors before truncating, with the first author last-name-first.
Include the full URL (with https://) as plain text in the citation. If your document will be read online, hyperlinks are acceptable. Avoid shortened URLs (bit.ly, etc.) — use the canonical full link so readers can verify the source.
Use the Chicago Footnote Generator for a focused Notes-Bibliography workflow — full notes, shortened notes, and the matching bibliography entry.
The full Chicago Citation Generator handles books, journal articles, videos, reports, and more in both systems.
Need APA or MLA for the same URL? The APA and MLA website generators have the same URL lookup.
Our deep-dive on Chicago Notes-Bibliography and Chicago Author-Date covers every quirk of both systems.
Save every Chicago citation you generate to your Works Cited library, then export the finished bibliography to Word, BibTeX, or RIS.
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