Free Citation Generator

Generate citations fast (and without second guessing every comma)

If you have ever stared at an APA reference and thought, wait, is the date supposed to go here or there, you are not alone. Citation styles look simple until you are doing them at 1 a.m. with 14 tabs open.

This tool is built for that exact moment.

You paste a source, pick a style, and get a clean citation back. It works for URLs, DOIs, and titles, which covers most of what students and researchers actually use day to day.

And yes, it does what the headline says. Create APA/MLA/Chicago Citations From a URL. But it also handles Harvard and IEEE when you need those too.

If you are using other helpers on the same project, you can also jump back to the main AI writing tools hub and knock out summaries, rewrites, and edits in the same place.

What you can cite with this citation generator

Most citation tools say they support everything, then they break the second you give them a weird page or a journal article with too many authors. Here is what this one is meant for.

Websites and online articles

Paste the page URL and the generator will try to pull the author, page title, publisher, and publish date. Great for news articles, blog posts, and reports.

Journal articles (especially with DOIs)

If you have a DOI, use it. It is the cleanest input, and usually produces the most accurate output because the metadata is structured.

Books (even when you only have a title)

If you only have a book title, you can still generate a citation, then quickly sanity check the author, edition, and year before submitting.

Picking the right style (quick cheat notes)

You probably already know what your teacher, journal, or organization wants. But if you are unsure, this helps.

APA 7: common in psychology, education, and social sciences. Lots of emphasis on date and DOI.

MLA 9: common in literature and humanities. Often focused on containers and where the source lives.

Chicago 17: popular in history and some publishing. Footnotes show up a lot, depending on the variant.

Harvard: widely used internationally, similar vibe to APA but with its own rules.

IEEE: common in engineering and computer science. Numbered references, more compact formatting.

Common citation mistakes this tool helps you avoid

A lot of citation errors are tiny, but they add up and can cost points fast.

Using the wrong capitalization rules in titles (APA vs MLA is a classic trap)

Forgetting italics on journal names, book titles, or containers

Mixing styles inside one bibliography because you copied citations from different sites

Putting the DOI in the wrong format, or using a messy URL when a DOI exists

Incorrect author formatting when there are many authors (or no obvious author)

Still, do a quick check before you submit

Auto formatting is amazing, but citations are only as good as the source metadata. Before you paste it into your bibliography, scan for:

Author names spelled correctly (especially initials)

Publication date accuracy

Correct title and subtitle punctuation

Working DOI or URL

That takes maybe 10 seconds per citation, and it saves you the annoying back and forth later.

A simple workflow that saves a lot of time

If you are building a longer reference list, do not wait until the end.

Cite sources as you find them

Keep a running bibliography in a doc or spreadsheet

Stay consistent with one style from the start

By the time you finish writing, your references are basically done already.