Citation generators and citation management software have made it much easier for students and researchers to create citations. These tools will automatically generate a citation for you in the proper style, such as APA style and MLA style. Some tools will also store your citations making it easy to access them later, share them or generate a works cited or reference list page. This page describes some of these helpful tools, such as EasyBib and Citation Machine.


EasyBib is popular citation management software from Chegg. It will automatically generate citations for you in MLA, APA and Chicago formats. EasyBib can generator citations for a website, book, film, journal, database, podcast, magazine article, press release, dissertation and dozens of other sources. The EasyBib Pro version ($9.99/month) provides thousands of additional style formats in addition to the main three mentioned above. It will also back up in your citations in the cloud. A screenshot from the EasyBib iPad app is pictured.

Citation Machine machine will automatically generate citations for you in MLA, APA, Chicago, Turabian and thousands of other styles. You start by choosing the style and then entering your citation source. Like EasyBib, Citation Machine is also a Chegg service.

OttoBib is a free online tool that makes a bibliography or works cited form an ISBN number. It can create citations in MLA, APA, Chicago and other styles. It has a Chrome extension.

Cite4ME bills itself as your personal reference assistant. Its tools include a citation generator, plagiarism checker and title page generator. It is free and works with multiple citation styles including APA, MLA, Chicago, AMA, IEEE, Bluebook, Harvard and more. It can be used to cite books, magazines, journals, websites and videos.

Cite This For Me is an citations generator tool. It supports thousands of college styles including MLA, APA, Harvard and Chicago. Cite This For Me is also a Chegg service. It was previously known as RefME. It has Chrome and Word add-ons.

RefWorks is a reference management tool from ProQuest. It works with Word and can generate citations in your documents. It can also be used to print a bibliography.

Zotero is a free tool that helps you collect, organize, cite and share research resources. Features include building research resource collections and tagging them. It supports thousands of citation styles and can instantly cite references in Word and LibreOffice. It will also synchronize your data across devices.

EndNote is research and reference manager software from Clarivate Analytics. It can be used to insert citations in your manuscript, build a bibliography in thousands of styles and share a reference library with up to 100 people. EndNote basic is available as a free online-only tool. It is also available as an iPad app and as desktop software, EndNote X8.

A few other citation tools and software products include Citation Producer, Citation Builder, Bibme and Mendeley.