Citation Generator — Free Online Tool

The Citation Generator formats references in APA, MLA, and Chicago style from the details of a source — author, title, publication, date, and URL or DOI.

The three styles differ in ways that are small individually and consequential in aggregate, because markers check them. APA leads with author and year and is standard across the sciences and social sciences. MLA leads with author and page and is standard in the humanities. Chicago offers two distinct systems — notes-and-bibliography, used heavily in history, and author-date, closer to APA. Details like whether first names are given in full or initialled, how multiple authors are ordered and truncated, and which elements are italicised all vary, and getting them wrong costs marks even when the source is correct.

What a generator cannot do is verify the source details you give it. A citation formatted perfectly from a wrong publication year is still wrong, and the errors that propagate furthest come from copying metadata that was already incorrect. Checking author spelling, year, and page numbers against the source itself is the step that matters.

Two format notes worth knowing: a DOI is preferred over a URL wherever one exists, because DOIs are permanent while URLs rot; and "accessed" dates are required for some source types in some styles and omitted in others.

Also worth remembering that citing correctly is the mechanical part of academic integrity — the substantive part is citing anything whose ideas are not your own, regardless of how much the wording changed.

Formatting happens in your browser.

Our Citation Generator is completely free to use with no signup required. For this tool, processing runs in your browser — your files and data stay on your device and are not uploaded to our servers.

Whether you are a developer, designer, student, or business owner, this tool is designed to save you time and make your workflow more efficient. Bookmark this page to access it whenever you need it — it will always be free.