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.