Free · No sign-up · APA 7th edition
APA Reference Generator
Type the details of a book, journal article, webpage or PDF report and get a correctly punctuated APA 7th-edition reference plus both in-text citation forms. Copy it, download a .txt list, or print straight to PDF — no account, nothing uploaded.
Source details
Everything updates as you type. Fields change with the source type.
Leave the year blank and APA renders (n.d.). Month and day are used for webpages, newspapers and videos.
Your reference
APA 7th edition · hanging indent shown as it prints
Your reference list
Entries are sorted alphabetically by author (or by title when there is no author) with a 0.5-inch hanging indent when printed.
How it works
Book, journal article, webpage, PDF report, newspaper, book chapter, video or AI output — the labels and italics rules change to match.
Paste the messy author string, the bare DOI, the date you have. Names are normalized to Last, F. M. and a missing year becomes (n.d.).
Take the reference, both in-text forms, or build the whole list and print it to PDF with the hanging indent APA requires.
The rules it applies for you
Two authors join with & in the reference list and in parentheses, "and" in narrative citations. Three or more shortens to First et al.
APA 7 lists the first 19 names, inserts an ellipsis, then the final author — with no ampersand. The generator switches automatically.
No author moves the title into the author slot and the in-text citation uses a short title in quotes. No year renders (n.d.).
A bare 10.xxxx DOI is rewritten as https://doi.org/10.xxxx and no period is added after a link, per APA 7.
Book, report, webpage and video titles are italic. Journal, newspaper and chapter titles are plain while the container is italic.
The print stylesheet sets 0.5-inch page margins and a true hanging indent so "Print / Save PDF" gives a submittable reference list.
Frequently asked
Is this really free, and do I need an account?
Yes. There is no sign-up, no paywall and no export limit. Everything runs in your browser, so nothing you type is uploaded or stored on a server.
Can it pull the citation out of my PDF?
No. Reading metadata out of a PDF needs OCR and reference parsing, which is out of scope. Open the PDF, type the four or five fields it shows, and copy the finished reference.
What happens to titles like PhD, MD or Jr.?
APA reference lists omit academic titles and suffixes such as PhD, MD or Jr., so the generator drops them and tells you it did. Professional suffixes like II or III are also removed.
When should I add a “Retrieved” date?
Only when the page is designed to change and the content is not archived — for example a live report, a wiki entry or a dashboard. For a stable article or PDF, leave it off.
How do I format AI output in APA 7?
Give the company as the author, the year, the model or prompt title in italics, a bracketed description such as [Large language model response], and the URL. In-text, cite the company and year.
How do I hand this in as a PDF?
Add each source to the reference list, then press Print / Save PDF. The print view hides everything except the alphabetized list, keeps the italics, and uses a 0.5-inch margin with a hanging indent.