Free Reference Format Converter
Change your whole reference list from one citation style to another. Paste it in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver or any mix; each entry is matched to its real database record and rebuilt in the style you choose, with author forms, ordering, casing and italics done by the target style's rules. Up to 100 references per run, unlimited, no account needed.
Trusted by researchers publishing in
How to convert a reference list in three steps
Paste your list
In whatever style it is currently in; you do not need to name it. Numbered lists, blank-line bibliographies and hanging-indent blocks from Word or PDFs all parse.
Entries match their records
Each entry is identified by DOI when it has one, otherwise by title, author and year, against trusted open scholarly databases. Strict thresholds decide between converted and kept as pasted.
Pick the target style and copy
APA 7, MLA 9, both Chicago systems, Harvard, IEEE or Vancouver, switchable instantly after the run. Copy entries singly or the whole converted list with italics intact.
Why researchers convert references here
Record-based conversion
Output is rebuilt from each entry's registered metadata, so the conversion also sheds transcription errors your original list carried.
Seven target styles
APA, MLA, Chicago in both systems, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver, each applying its own author forms, ordering, casing and italics.
Nothing converted silently
Every row shows its status. Unmatched entries stay as pasted and are excluded from the copied list, with a note saying why.
Any direction, any mix
A list that is half APA and half something else converts the same way, because conversion starts from the record, not from parsing your punctuation.
Changing citation styles: why it is harder than it looks, and how matching fixes it
Switching a paper from one citation style to another sounds like a find-and-replace job until you list what actually changes. Author names flip between full form and initials, and between comma-first and natural order. The year moves from directly after the authors to the end of the entry, or into parentheses, or out of them. Titles switch between sentence case and title case, and between quotation marks and italics. Page ranges gain or lose abbreviations, journal names abbreviate in Vancouver, and the DOI appears as a link, a bare identifier or not at all. Doing that by hand across forty entries during a journal resubmission is slow, and slow manual reformatting is where reference lists acquire fresh errors.
The reliable way to convert is to stop parsing the old formatting altogether. This converter matches each pasted entry to its record in trusted open scholarly databases like Crossref and Semantic Scholar, then formats that record in the target style from scratch, using the same engine as our citation generator. Starting from registered metadata has a welcome side effect: because the output is rebuilt rather than rearranged, a wrong issue number or misspelled author in the pasted list does not carry over. The same engine drives the DOI to citation converter when you would rather start from identifiers, and the BibTeX generator when the target is a .bib file instead of a formatted list.
The honest limits are the databases' coverage. Journal articles match extremely well; books, chapters, websites, theses and some preprints often have no record to match, and those entries are kept exactly as you pasted them rather than converted from a guess, each with a note saying so. A flagged row deserves a minute of attention anyway: an entry that matches nothing is sometimes an entry with a garbled title, and if the list came from an AI assistant it is worth running through the AI citation checker, which reports what each entry matched and what its DOI actually points to.
Style conversion usually lands at submission time, which is also when the rest of the manuscript gets its final pass. The ProofreaderPro editor proofreads the full paper with tracked changes you approve line by line and leaves the reference list exactly as written, and if you are still choosing between styles, our guide to APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE covers which fields each one cares about.
Example: one APA entry, converted two ways
The entry is matched to its database record, then rebuilt in the target style. Notice everything that changes at once: author name forms, the position of the year, title casing rules, journal abbreviation conventions, page ranges and the DOI presentation.
You paste (APA 7)
Watson, J. D., & Crick, F. H. C. (1953). Molecular structure of nucleic acids: A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature, 171(4356), 737-738. https://doi.org/10.1038/171737a0
You get back (MLA (9th edition))
Watson, J. D., and F. H. C. Crick. "Molecular structure of nucleic acids: A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid." Nature, vol. 171, no. 4356, 1953, pp. 737-738. https://doi.org/10.1038/171737a0.
You get back (Vancouver)
1. Watson JD, Crick FHC. Molecular structure of nucleic acids: A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature. 1953;171(4356):737-738. doi:10.1038/171737a0
Both outputs are produced by the converter above from this entry's real database record; the other four styles work the same way.
Reference format converter FAQs
Which citation styles can I convert between?
How does the conversion actually work?
Why was one of my entries kept as pasted instead of converted?
Does converting my reference list also convert my in-text citations?
List converted. Now give the paper the same care.
The ProofreaderPro editor polishes grammar, clarity and academic register across your full manuscript with tracked changes you approve line by line, and never touches your citations. Built for researchers, free to try.
Proofread my paper freeReady to polish your next paper?
Proofread, humanize, paraphrase and translate your academic writing in one place. Free to start, no credit card required.
Get Started Free