Free Citation Generators Compared
CiteTools beside seven other free citation generators. What each row says about another tool comes from that tool's own site as we found it on October 12, 2026. CiteTools wrote this page, and the pages we read are listed under Sources.
| Tool | Price | Ads | Account | What you can paste | Styles | Exports | Checks that a reference exists |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CiteTools The maker of this page | Free. There is no paid plan. | None | None. Nothing to sign up for. | DOI, web address, ISBN, PubMed ID, arXiv ID, BibTeX, RIS, or a pasted reference, one at a time or a list of up to 100 | 8 styles: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver, AMA, and ACS | Copy, plain text, BibTeX, RIS, Word, Rich Text, LaTeX, PDF | Yes. The reference checker takes up to 30 references at a time and looks them up in Crossref, PubMed, DataCite, and DBLP, free and without an account. |
| ZoteroBib The team behind Zotero. Open source. | Free | None | None | URL, ISBN, DOI, PMID, arXiv ID, or title, and a form for manual entry | Over 10,000 CSL styles | Copy, RIS, BibTeX, RTF, HTML | None stated. Its FAQ tells you to check every entry yourself. |
| MyBib Independent. Its blog says it is not funded by investors. | Free. MyBib Plus, $24 a year, adds server backup. | None | Not needed | URL, ISBN, ISSN, DOI, or title | Over 9,000 styles | Word and Google Docs are the ones its home page names | None found on its pages |
| Scribbr Part of QuillBot, in the Learneo group | The generator is free. Proofreading and plagiarism checks are paid. | Yes. The generator page carries ad slots and a "Why do I see ads?" link. | Not needed. Unsaved references expire after 30 days. | Title, URL, DOI, or ISBN, and a form for manual entry | APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver and IEEE are in its picker | Word, BibTeX for LaTeX, clipboard, Google Docs | A paid Citation Checker reviews formatting and missing references ($9.95 for APA only, $2.75 a source for all citation styles). Its page mentions no database lookup. |
| Citation Machine A Chegg service | Free with ads. Its paid plan is sold as ad-free. | Yes, as we saw them on its pages | Not needed to build a list | A website by keyword or URL, a journal article by title or DOI, and forms for manual entry | Its home page says thousands of styles, including MLA, APA, Chicago and Harvard | Google Drive, Word | None found on its pages |
| EasyBib A Chegg service | Free with ads. Its paid plan is sold as ad-free. | Yes, as we saw them on its pages | Not needed to fill in a citation | A journal article by title or DOI. It also lists website and book sources. | Its home page says thousands of styles, including MLA, APA, Chicago and Harvard | Google Drive, Word | None found on its pages |
| BibGuru The team at Paperpile | Free with ads. BibGuru Plus is $4.99 a month. | Yes | Not needed. Free references stay in your browser for 7 days. | A URL, a book by title, an article by title or author, and manual entry | APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago and thousands more | Word is the one its help page names | None claimed |
| citeme.app One founder | Free with limits. Its Semester plan is about $3.75 a month. | None | Not needed to cite. Its reference checker asked for a sign-in. | DOI, PMID, ISBN, URL, title, or topic, and references read out of a PDF | Over 60 on the free plan, over 10,000 CSL styles on Pro | Copy. BibTeX and RIS up to 50 an export. Word and PDF on Pro. | Yes. It has a reference checker, with 3 checks a month on the free plan. Its site says it consults indexes such as OpenAlex, Crossref, Semantic Scholar and PubMed. |
Where CiteTools is weaker
- CiteTools has 8 citation styles. Most tools in this table list thousands.
- It does not look a source up by its title alone. Paste an identifier or the whole reference. Every other tool in this table can search by title.
- It saves no projects or folders. The only list it keeps is your last ten conversions, in your browser. Scribbr, MyBib and BibGuru Plus let you keep lists or projects.
- It has no browser extension. Scribbr, BibGuru and citeme.app have one.
- It has no export to Google Docs or Google Drive. Scribbr and MyBib export to Google Docs, and Citation Machine and EasyBib to Google Drive.
- It has no form for typing a source field by field. ZoteroBib, MyBib, Scribbr, Citation Machine, EasyBib and BibGuru have one.
- It does not read references out of a PDF. citeme.app does.
- It is not open source. ZoteroBib is.
- A reference checker is not unique to it. citeme.app has one too, with 3 checks a month on its free plan.
What CiteTools does
- It takes a pasted reference, or a list of up to 100, and writes it in another style.
- Each result says whether a published record confirmed it or whether it was built from your text as written.
- Its reference checker is free without an account, takes up to 30 references a check, and publishes its sources and thresholds.
- It has no ads, no account and no paid plan. BibTeX and RIS export are free.
- Pasted text goes to the CiteTools server, and a reference the server cannot read on its own goes to OpenAI. The server keeps a finished conversion in memory for up to an hour and the model's reading of a pasted reference for up to 24 hours.
How these facts were checked
We opened each tool's own pages on October 12, 2026 and wrote down what they state: the price, what its input field accepts, which styles and exports it names. For ads, sign-in and guest use we also tried Scribbr, Citation Machine, EasyBib and MyBib once, without an account, and noted what we saw. Where we found no statement, the cell says none was found or claimed, which is weaker than a no. A cell lists what a vendor names, so a tool may do more. Sources are listed per tool, not per sentence. CiteTools wrote this comparison, so follow the links before you decide. Tools change: tell us through the contact page when a row is out of date.