Free Citation Generator: APA, MLA, Harvard & 10,000+ Styles

Cite websites, books, journal articles, videos and 25+ source types automatically. Search by title, URL, DOI, ISBN, PMID or arXiv ID, then copy or download your reference list.

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Cite a

Tip: use the URL, DOI, ISBN, PMID or arXiv ID for the best accuracy.

10,000+ citation stylesSame CSL engine as Zotero & MendeleyWord, Google Docs & BibTeX exportFree, no sign-up

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How to Use This Free Citation Generator

1. Choose your citation style

Pick APA 7, MLA 9, Harvard, Chicago, IEEE, AMA or Vancouver from the style bar, or click More styles to search over 10,000 journal, university and publisher styles. You can switch at any time and every reference reformats instantly.

2. Search for your source

Choose Website, Book or Journal, then paste a URL, DOI, ISBN, PMID or arXiv ID, or type a title. Pick the right result and the generator fills in the author, date, publisher and other details for you.

3. Review, then save

Check the details in the editor. A live preview shows exactly how the reference and in-text citation will look. Fill anything that is missing (the generator flags it), then click Save.

4. Copy or download your bibliography

Copy the full list with formatting, or download it for Microsoft Word, Google Docs, BibTeX (Overleaf/LaTeX) or RIS (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote). Your projects save automatically in your browser, and you can share a link to any list.

APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, IEEE and 10,000+ More Styles

This citation machine formats references with the open Citation Style Language (CSL), the same standard and engine used by Zotero and Mendeley. That means punctuation, italics, capitalisation and ordering follow each style's official rules exactly, rather than being guessed.

APA 7th Edition

Business, psychology, nursing, education and social sciences. Author, A. A. (Year). Title. Publisher.

Harvard (Cite Them Right)

The default at most UK universities and for CIPD assignments. Author (Year) Title. Place: Publisher.

MLA 9th Edition

Humanities, literature and languages. Produces a Works Cited page. Author. Title. Publisher, Year.

Chicago / Turabian

History, arts and theology. Author-date or notes and bibliography (footnotes). Turabian is the student version of Chicago.

IEEE

Engineering, computer science and IT. Numbered citations [1] with a numbered reference list.

AMA & Vancouver

Medicine, nursing and health sciences. Numbered, citation-order references, with superscript or bracketed numbers.

Cite a Website, Book, Journal Article and 25+ Source Types

🌐 Website or webpage

Paste the page URL. The generator reads the page's own metadata to find the title, author, site name and publication date, and adds today's access date. News articles, blogs, YouTube videos and PDFs are detected automatically.

📚 Book

Paste the ISBN (on the back cover or copyright page) or search by title and author. Publisher, place, edition and year are filled in from library catalogues.

📜 Journal article

Paste the DOI, PubMed ID or arXiv ID for exact author, journal, volume, issue and page details, or search by article title. Works for articles from ScienceDirect, JSTOR, PubMed, Springer, Wiley and Google Scholar.

➕ Everything else

Use More sources or Cite manually for book chapters, newspaper and magazine articles, reports, theses, conference papers, encyclopedia and dictionary entries, films, podcasts, images, datasets, software, legislation, court cases, patents, interviews, lectures and personal communications. Already have a formatted reference? Add it as Pre-formatted.

Citation Generator FAQs

A citation generator (also called a reference generator or bibliography maker) turns source details such as the author, title, date and publisher into a correctly formatted reference and in-text citation in the style you need, such as APA, MLA or Harvard.

Formatting is handled by citeproc-js and the official CSL style files, the same formatting engine used by professional reference managers such as Zotero and Mendeley, so the output follows each style's rules exactly. Accuracy then depends on the source details, so check author names, dates and page numbers in the editor before saving. The generator warns you when important information is missing.

A citation is the short marker in your text, such as (Smith, 2023) or [1]. A reference is the full entry at the end of your paper. A bibliography, reference list or Works Cited page is the complete list of references. Click In-text on any reference to get its citation, with an optional page number.

Yes. Pick a new style and your whole list reformats instantly, including the in-text citations, ordering and numbering.

Leave the field empty. The style decides what to do: APA moves the title into the author position and uses "n.d." for no date, MLA starts with the title, and Harvard uses "no date". You can also add an organisation, such as the World Health Organization, as the author.

Yes. Use Download to get a Word (.docx) file with hanging indents and your chosen font, copy the list straight into Google Docs, or download BibTeX (.bib) for Overleaf and LaTeX. RIS files import into Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote.

Yes. Projects save automatically in your browser on this device. Create separate projects for each assignment from the Projects menu. To move a list to another device or send it to someone, use Share to copy a link.

Yes. Generate your references here, download them to Word, then add a short summary and evaluation paragraph under each entry.

Yes. Our academic editors check and correct complete reference lists and in-text citations in APA, Harvard, MLA, Chicago, IEEE, Vancouver, OSCOLA and more. Message us on WhatsApp for a quick quote.