PaperCitation

Citation generator · Web address

URL to citation

Paste a link and we read the page's title, author, date and site name, then format the citation in the style you pick.

  • Reads the page's title, author, date and site name
  • Strips tracking codes from the link
  • Falls back to a form when a page can't be read
  • Free, no signup, no ads

What are you citing?
Papers and books
Web and media

Your citation

Start with a title, or search above. Your citation appears here as you type.

What the generator does

Paste a web address. The tool fetches the page’s public details, checks whether the page names a DOI, and fills the form: title, author, date, site name and address. You pick a style and the citation updates as you edit the fields.

Pages made for citation, such as journal articles, news stories and many government and university sites, carry clean details. Blogs and small sites often don’t, so expect to fix an author or a date.

What to check

  • The author. Many pages have none, or name the organization. If there is no person, the citation starts with the organization or the title.
  • The date. A page may show the date it was posted, the date it was updated, or neither. Use the one your style asks for. If there is no date, the citation says so (“n.d.” in APA).
  • The site name. It should be the name of the website, not the address. Fix it if it shows a domain.
  • Wikipedia, videos and social posts. These have their own patterns. See the guides on citing Wikipedia, a YouTube video and an X post.

If the page is a journal article, its address is not the best thing to cite. The DOI is permanent and is what most styles prefer. When the page names its DOI, the tool uses the DOI record, and you can also paste the DOI into the DOI to citation tool.

Questions people ask

What does it read from the page?

Only the page's public details: the title, the author, the date and the site name that the page gives about itself, including the tags that scholarly sites use for citations. If the page lists a DOI, we use the DOI to get a fuller record instead. We read the top of the page, not your account or anything behind a login.

Why was part of my link removed?

Links often carry tracking codes after a question mark, such as utm_ campaign tags and click IDs from ads. They say how you arrived, not what the page is, so they are dropped from the citation. Parts a link needs to work are kept, like the video code in a YouTube address.

It couldn't read my page. What now?

Some sites block automated readers, need a login or send a PDF instead of a web page, and for those nothing can be read. The form is still there: type the title, author, date and site name. The page itself shows most of them.

Does it show the website's real name?

For well-known sites, yes: a link to en.wikipedia.org gives “Wikipedia” and a link to a news site gives the paper's name. For sites we don't know, it uses the name the page gives, or the plain domain if the page gives none.

Is a retrieval date needed?

It depends on the style and on your instructor. APA asks for one only when a page is not archived and is designed to change over time. If your guide wants an access date, add it in the form.

Is my link stored?

Links without a question mark are looked up and the page details can be kept for up to a week to make repeat lookups faster. Links that contain a question mark are never cached. See the privacy policy.

Last reviewed . Style rules on this page are paraphrased from the official sources listed here.

Official sources

We paraphrase official guidance and link to it. When in doubt, follow the source and your instructor.