Paste a DOI (10.xxxx/…), URL, or ISBN. Pick a style. Get back a clean reference in APA, ACS, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, AMA — or any of the 10,000+ other CSL styles. Free APA citation generator. Free ACS citation generator. No manual cleanup.
Tip: Paste a URL, DOI, or ISBN for automatic metadata lookup.
Paste a DOI, URL, ISBN, or partial title. Pick your style. Out comes a clean reference. APA 7, APA 6, MLA 9, MLA 8, Chicago (notes-and-bibliography or author-date), Harvard, AMA, ACS, IEEE, Vancouver, Optica, or one of the 10,000+ others in the Citation Style Language registry. The output matches the official rules down to the punctuation. Free. Always will be.
Each input goes through the right source. DOIs hit Crossref directly, since that's where they're registered. ISBNs resolve through library and publisher records. URLs get scraped for embedded metadata (DOI in the source, OG tags, schema.org). If nothing's there, we fall back to Semantic Scholar and OpenAlex. Once the canonical record lands, the CSL engine renders the citation. That's the same engine Zotero and Mendeley run, the same one behind most journal submission portals. The output matches what a reference manager would produce.
2401.12345. You'll see the pre-print and any peer-reviewed version that's since shown up.The picker above the fold covers the styles most people want. Click More and you get the full CSL registry. JAMA, Nature, Cell, The Lancet, your university's thesis handbook. They're all in there. Each style has its quirks. Italicize the journal or don't. Ampersand or "and". DOI as a bare string or a full URL. En-dashes versus hyphens in page ranges. The CSL engine knows all of it. You don't have to.
Paste a DOI and pick APA 7 (or APA 6 if your professor still requires the older edition). The generator returns a fully formatted reference: hanging indent, sentence-case title, italicized journal, ampersand between final two authors, full https://doi.org/ URL.
MLA 9 uses the container model — articles live inside journals, chapters live inside books, episodes live inside series. The generator builds the right container hierarchy automatically, with full author first names, title-case titles, and the right punctuation.
Chicago has two systems: notes-and-bibliography (humanities) and author-date (social sciences). Pick the one your discipline uses; the generator builds either the bibliography entry or the footnote/endnote entry, with the right punctuation throughout.
ACS (American Chemical Society) is the standard in chemistry journals. Pasting a DOI returns a citation with proper italicization on the journal, bold volume number, year in italics, and the page range formatted as ACS specifies.
AMA (American Medical Association) is the standard for medical and clinical writing. The generator handles the numbered superscript citation style, journal abbreviations, and the AMA-specific date and DOI formatting conventions.
Harvard is a family of styles, not a single one — Cite Them Right, Anglia Ruskin, and a dozen institutional variants. Pick the right one in the More menu; the generator builds the entry to match that institution's published guide.
Yes. Always will be. The generator doesn't use AI credits and doesn't require an account. Sign-in only matters if you want to save what you generate to your Works Cited library. AI-powered tools (Find Source, Citation Checker, Verify Source, Writing Assistant) cost credits. The generator doesn't. No cap.
DOIs every time. They resolve directly to Crossref, so every field — authors, year, title, journal, volume, issue, pages — comes back exactly as the publisher registered it. URLs work well when the page carries clean metadata, which most journals, news outlets, and government sites do. ISBNs work for books. Title-and-author fallback is the slowest path and usually wants a human confirmation, so save it for when nothing else is available.
Both. APA 7 came out in 2019 and is the default. APA 6 still shows up on older course handouts and a handful of journals. The two differ on a few things. APA 7 drops the publisher location, formats DOIs as full URLs, allows singular "they". The generator handles those automatically once you pick the version.
MLA 9 (2021) keeps MLA 8's container model and tightens the guidance on inclusive language, annotated bibliographies, and DOI formatting. Both are supported. MLA 9 is the default. Most institutions have moved over, but check your syllabus if you're unsure.
Plenty don't. Older books, websites, government reports, a lot of conference papers. Paste a URL or ISBN if either exists. If neither, paste a partial title and the generator will search for the nearest match. For genuinely unique sources — a personal communication, a private letter, an unpublished manuscript — drop the bibliographic fields straight into the structured editor.
Yes. Every generated citation comes back with both the reference-list entry and the matching in-text form. APA's (Author, Year). MLA's (Author Page). Chicago's footnote. AMA's superscript. For more on how in-text citations work, see What Are In-Text Citations? and In-Text Citations vs References.
Yes. Sign in (free) and click "Save" on any generated citation to drop it into your Works Cited library. Build the bibliography incrementally as you research. Organize entries by project. Export the finished list to Word, Google Docs, BibTeX, or RIS when the paper's ready.
For DOI inputs it's essentially perfect. Every field comes straight from Crossref's record. For URL inputs accuracy tracks the quality of the page's metadata. Most major journals and news sites are clean. Small blogs and ephemeral pages may need a manual edit on author or date. The structured editor lets you fix any field before copying the citation out.
Click More in the style picker. You'll get the full Citation Style Language registry. 10,000+ journal- and institution-specific styles. Nature, Cell, JAMA, The Lancet, IEEE, ASA, APSA, most major university thesis handbooks.
Yes. Titles, authors, and journal names stay in their original language. For non-Latin scripts (Cyrillic, Chinese, Arabic) the transliteration comes through whenever the source's metadata includes one. For very small non-English-language journals that aren't in Crossref or OpenAlex, the URL or partial-title fallback is your best bet.
Get the scoop on citation basics and how to cite different sources in APA, AMA, ACS, Optica, MLA, and Chicago formats with our citation guides here.
Whether your teacher is asking for parenthetical citations or footnotes, we have you covered. Read What Are In-Text Citations? and In-Text Citations vs References to see exactly how to format them.
Already have a reference and want to check it for accuracy? Run it through our AI Citation Checker to confirm the source exists and the metadata matches the original record.
Have a claim or sentence but no citation yet? Our Find Source tool searches Crossref, Semantic Scholar, arXiv, OpenAlex, and PubMed to surface peer-reviewed papers that support your statement.
Your reader will be looking at the kind of sources you cite. Take a moment to think about credibility — our guides on finding credible sources and peer-reviewed sources can help.
Polish the final draft with our Writing Assistant — it reviews grammar, clarity, and academic tone so your finished paper reads as cleanly as it cites.
Want a page tuned to a single style? Jump straight to the APA 7, APA 6, MLA 9, MLA 8, Chicago, Harvard, AMA, ACS, IEEE, or Vancouver generator — each with style-specific guidance and examples.
Already wrote your bibliography in the wrong format? Drop it into our Citation Converter to reformat an entire works-cited list into a different style in one click.
Save every citation you generate to your personal Works Cited library, then export the finished list when your paper is ready to submit.
If you have the PDF in hand, run it through the Reading Assistant to auto-parse the references and verify each cited claim against the original paper.
If the paper went through ChatGPT or another model, the AI Detector and the Plagiarism Checker catch the patterns reviewers look for before submission.