Free APA Citation Generator
Build accurate APA 7th edition references in seconds. Paste a DOI or paper title and the generator retrieves the real metadata from Crossref, then formats the reference list entry and every in-text variation: parenthetical, narrative and direct quotation. Journal articles, books, chapters and websites, with the current 7th edition rules applied throughout.
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How to create an APA citation in three steps
Find your source
Paste a DOI, a doi.org link or the paper's title and the generator pulls the real metadata from Crossref's open database of 160+ million scholarly records. Books, chapters and websites can be entered manually.
Check the details
Open the source details to verify authors, year, volume and pages, the thirty-second habit that keeps a reference list accurate. Every field is editable before you copy.
Copy in APA 7
Copy the reference entry with italics intact for Word or Google Docs, plus every in-text form: parenthetical, narrative and quotation variants, ready to paste.
Why this APA generator is different
Real records, not guesses
Lookups query Crossref, the registry publishers deposit their own metadata into. The authors, year, volume and DOI come from the article's registered record, not from a model's recollection.
7th edition throughout
The 20-author rule, et al. from three authors, publisher without place, and DOIs as live https links: the current manual's conventions, not the 2009 edition's.
Every in-text form
Parenthetical, narrative and quotation-with-page citations are generated alongside the reference entry, so the form you need mid-sentence is one copy away.
Italics survive the paste
Copy puts both rich and plain text on the clipboard: journal names and volume numbers arrive in Word or Google Docs already italicized.
APA 7: the default style of the social sciences
APA style, maintained by the American Psychological Association, is the standard across psychology, education, nursing, business and most of the social and behavioural sciences. Its author-date logic is built for fields where the currency of a claim matters: the year sits inside every citation, so a reader can weigh the evidence without leaving the sentence.
The 7th edition, published in 2020, is the one your department means when it says APA, and it changed the details that generators and old habits most often get wrong. Books no longer carry a place of publication. DOIs are formatted as https://doi.org links rather than a doi: label. Reference entries list up to 20 authors where the 6th edition stopped at seven, and in-text citations use et al. from three authors onwards, from the first citation. If a reference list mixes these conventions, a marker familiar with the manual will notice.
The mechanical half of referencing is what this page automates. The judgement half stays with you: cite what you actually read, keep quotations exact with a page number, and make sure every in-text citation has a matching reference entry. That last check matters double in AI-assisted drafts, since language models are known to invent plausible-looking references; verifying each DOI against a real database is precisely how you catch them.
For the full set of rules with worked examples, see our APA 7 citation guide. Deciding between styles? The main citation generator formats the same source in six styles side by side, and the title case converter handles APA's heading capitalization.
Anatomy of an APA citation
One journal article, taken apart. Hover any coloured part of the reference entry, or of the eight in-text variations, to see what it is and the 7th edition rule behind it.
Chen, M. R., & O'Connor, L. (2023). Sleep quality and academic performance in first-year university students. Journal of Applied Learning Science, 115(4), 512-528. https://doi.org/10.1234/jals.2023.0158
Alphabetize by the first author's surname and format every entry with a hanging indent.
(Chen, 2023)
Chen (2023) found that...
Use when the author is the subject of your sentence.
(Chen & O'Connor, 2023)
(Chen et al., 2023)
(Chen, 2023, p. 517)
(Chen, 2023; Osei, 2021)
(World Health Organization, 2024)
(Chen, n.d.)
Hover or tap any coloured part for what it is and the rule behind it.
The APA rules the generator applies for you
Six conventions that separate a clean APA reference list from one that reads as improvised.
Sentence case for titles
Article and book titles capitalize only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns. Journal names are the exception: they keep title case and italics.
The ampersand convention
Inside parentheses and in the reference list, authors are joined by &. In the running sentence, write the word and. Mixing these up is one of the most common APA slips.
Et al. from three authors
APA 7 cites three or more authors as First Author et al. from the first citation, not the second. The reference entry still lists up to 20 authors in full.
DOIs as live links
A DOI is presented as https://doi.org/10.xxxx, not as doi: or DOI:. No period follows it, so a stray dot never breaks the link. Include the DOI whenever one exists.
Volume italic, issue not
The volume number is italicized with the journal name; the issue number sits in parentheses, unitalicized, with no space between them: 115(4).
Publisher, not place
Since the 7th edition, book references end with the publisher alone. If a source or an older generator gives you London: Academic Press, the city no longer belongs there.
APA examples by source type
The same generator, four source types. Note what changes: where the italics sit, how editors appear, and what replaces the publisher for a website.
Journal article
Chen, M. R., & O'Connor, L. (2023). Sleep quality and academic performance in first-year university students. Journal of Applied Learning Science, 115(4), 512-528. https://doi.org/10.1234/jals.2023.0158
Book
Chen, M. R. (2021). The Science of Student Sleep (2nd ed.). Academic Press.
Book chapter
Chen, M. R. (2022). Sleep and memory consolidation. In L. O'Connor & S. Alvarez (Eds.), Handbook of Learning Science (pp. 301-322). Academic Press.
Website
World Health Organization. (2024). Sleep and adolescent health. WHO Fact Sheets. Retrieved 14 July 2026, from https://example.org/sleep
All four are produced by the generator above; every author, title and DOI in them is invented for illustration.
APA citation generator FAQs
Which APA edition does this follow?
Can it create a citation from just a DOI?
Does it check my article title's capitalization?
Is this citation generator really free?
References sorted. Now polish the prose they sit in.
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