Citation Generator100% Free · No signup

Changes what info we look for and how we format it

📋
Your saved citations show up here. Generate one and click Save.
🌐 Add a WebsiteAI powered

Paste a URL — e.g. https://bbc.com/article

Here is how it works
1
Pick your source type
Choose from the left. Website, book, journal, YouTube. It changes what we look for and how we format it.
2
Paste and cite
Drop in a URL, ISBN, DOI or title. Hit Cite. We check academic databases first, then AI fills in the rest.
3
Switch styles freely
APA, MLA, Chicago and more. Switch any time and your citation regenerates automatically in the new format.
Questions people actually ask
Is this actually free?
Yes, completely free. FreeCitation supports APA 7th, MLA 9th, Chicago 17th, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver, AMA, Turabian, Oxford, and OSCOLA with no daily limits, no paywalls, and no account required. It is funded by ads, not subscriptions.
Do I need to sign up?
No. There is no signup, no email, no credit card, and no account. FreeCitation has no login system by design. You open the page and start citing immediately.
How accurate are the citations?
For DOIs, FreeCitation pulls directly from Crossref, the authoritative academic metadata registry used by Springer, Elsevier, and Wiley. For ISBNs it queries Open Library. For URLs it reads Open Graph metadata embedded in the page. DOI and ISBN citations are highly accurate. URL citations depend on how well the source page is structured. Always verify before submitting to a professor.
Why did you build this?
EasyBib removed its free tier and put citations behind a subscription. CitationMachine buried the tool under popups and upsells. MyBib works but the interface is cluttered. FreeCitation was built to do one thing well: turn a URL, DOI, or ISBN into a properly formatted citation in under three seconds, no nonsense.

Free citation generator for APA, MLA, Chicago and more

Paste a link, a DOI, an ISBN or a book title and FreeCitation builds a properly formatted reference in a couple of seconds. You are set to APA 7th right now, and you can switch styles on the left at any time without retyping your source. It is free, there is no account to make, and there is no cap on how many you run.

Behind the scenes it checks Crossref for DOIs and Open Library for ISBNs, reads the page metadata for plain URLs, and only falls back to AI when nothing else can find the source. DOI and ISBN citations come out very accurate. URL citations depend on how well the page is built, so it is worth a quick read before you hand the paper in.

Ten citation styles, all free
✓APA 7thPsychology, education, nursing, social sciences
✓MLA 9thEnglish, literature, the humanities
✓ChicagoHistory and humanities, footnotes and bibliography
✓HarvardCommon across UK and Australian universities
✓IEEEEngineering and computer science, numbered
✓VancouverMedicine and the biomedical sciences
✓AMA 11thMedical and health science journals
✓TurabianA student friendly take on Chicago
✓OxfordFootnote style used in some UK courses
✓OSCOLAUK legal writing, cases and legislation
Why it is free

EasyBib was free for years, then Chegg bought it and moved citations behind a subscription. CitationMachine, also owned by Chegg, did the same. The rules for a citation are public and the source data is free through Crossref and Open Library, so we built a version that does the one thing, keeps the ads light, and stays out of your way.

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