Free APA Citation Generator (7th Edition)
Paste a DOI, URL or title and get an APA 7 reference and in-text citation. No sign-up.
Look up a source or type its title, and the reference and in-text citation appear here.
Citing several sources? Build the whole list in the bibliography generator.
Another style? Citation generator for APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard and IEEE
APA citation examples
Three real sources, formatted by the tool above, with the in-text citation for each.
- Book
- Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass. Milkweed Editions.
- In-text citation: (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 42)
- Journal article
- Kucsko, G., Maurer, P. C., Yao, N. Y., Kubo, M., Noh, H. J., Lo, P. K., Park, H., & Lukin, M. D. (2013). Nanometre-scale thermometry in a living cell. Nature, 500(7460), 54–58. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12373
- In-text citation: (Kucsko et al., 2013, p. 55)
- Web page
- What are tides? (n.d.). National Ocean Service. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/tides.html
- In-text citation: (What are tides?, n.d.)
APA rules the tool applies
- Authors. Last name and initials, up to 20 authors, with & before the last: Smith, J., & Doe, J.
- Date. The year in brackets after the authors, or (n.d.) when there is no date.
- Titles. Books and web pages in italics; journal articles in plain text, with the journal name and volume in italics.
- No author. The title moves to the author position, and the in-text citation uses a short title.
- DOI. Written as a link, https://doi.org/…, with no "Retrieved from" and no full stop after it.
- In text. (Smith, 2022), (Smith & Doe, 2022) or (Smith et al., 2022), with p. or pp. for quotes.
More detail in our APA 7th edition citation guide.
Frequently asked questions
Does this follow APA 7th edition?
Yes. References follow APA 7: up to 20 authors listed with initials, an ampersand before the last author, the DOI written as a https://doi.org/ link, and no publisher location.
How do I cite a source with no author or no date in APA?
With no author, the title moves to the author position and the in-text citation uses a short title. With no date, write (n.d.). Leave the author or year empty and the tool does both.
How does an APA in-text citation look?
Author and year in brackets: (Smith, 2022). Two authors use an ampersand, (Smith & Doe, 2022), and three or more use et al., (Smith et al., 2022). Add a page for quotes: (Smith, 2022, p. 45).
Does it change my title to sentence case?
No. APA wants article and book titles in sentence case, but the tool keeps the capitalisation you give it, because it can't tell which words are names. Lower-case everything except the first word, proper nouns and the word after a colon.