One API call. Any source. Any style. Stop wasting engineering time on citation edge cases.
// Send any URL, DOI, or ISBN. Get a perfect citation back.
const response = await fetch('https://api.citefor.com/v1/cite', {
method: 'POST',
headers: { 'Authorization': `Bearer ${API_KEY}` },
body: JSON.stringify({
source: 'https://nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07930-y',
style: 'apa-7'
})
});
// Response:
// "Castelvecchi, D. (2024). AI makes up fake scientific papers. Nature.
// https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07930-y"You're building a writing tool, research platform, or AI assistant. Your users need citations. Sounds simple—until you actually build it.
CiteFor handles the complexity so you can ship features. Integrate in minutes. We maintain it forever.
Accept URLs, DOIs, ISBNs, PMIDs, or raw metadata. Our parser figures out what you're giving us.
Full CSL support: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Bluebook, and every obscure journal format.
AI-powered extraction pulls author, title, date from any URL—even pages with poor markup.
Send up to 100 sources in a single request. Get a formatted bibliography back instantly.
Return plain text, HTML with proper italics, or structured JSON for custom rendering.
Flag missing fields, warn about incomplete citations, and suggest fixes automatically.
Pass a URL, DOI, ISBN, or raw metadata to our API. We accept anything.
Our AI extracts metadata and applies your chosen citation style perfectly.
Receive clean HTML, plain text, or JSON. Render it however you want.
No surprise fees. No per-seat charges. Just citations.
For side projects and evaluation
For growing products
For high-volume applications
CiteFor accepts URLs, DOIs, ISBNs, PMIDs, arXiv IDs, or raw metadata (author, title, date, etc.). Our AI-powered parser automatically detects the source type and extracts the relevant information. If it's on the web, we can probably cite it.
CSL.js requires you to maintain the library, handle edge cases, and update styles yourself. Zotero is a user-facing tool, not a developer API. CiteFor is maintained infrastructure—we handle updates, testing, and edge cases so you can focus on your product.
LLMs are notoriously bad at citations—they hallucinate sources and mangle formatting. We're not competing with AI; we're enabling it. Every AI writing tool needs a reliable citation layer. That's us.
We test against official style guide examples and run continuous validation. Our validation endpoint also flags missing fields and suggests fixes, helping your users create better citations—not just formatted ones.
Yes. We support all 10,000+ CSL styles out of the box. For Scale customers, we also create custom styles for specific journals or internal standards. Just send us a sample and we'll build it.
Free tier. No credit card required. Build something great.
Get Your Free API Key →