There are many tools available to help with APA citations, but they serve different purposes and work in different ways. This comparison covers the most popular options so you can choose the right tool—or combination of tools—for your needs.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | CiteLogos | Scribbr | Grammarly | PERRLA | Zotero |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary Function | Citation checker | Citation generator | Writing assistant + citation generator | Paper formatter + citation generator | Reference manager |
| Validates existing in-text citations | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Checks et al. formatting & rules | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Checks & vs. “and” usage | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Cross-references citations ↔ references | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Validates reference list formatting | ✓ | Partial | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Generates new citations from DOI/URL | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Works inside Microsoft Word | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Feedback via Word comments at error location | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Works offline | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | Partial | ✓ |
| Grammar & style checking | ✗ | Partial | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Mac + Windows | ✓ | ✓ (web) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Price | Free until June 2026, then $8/mo | Free (basic) / $20/mo | Free (basic) / $12/mo | ~$12/6 months | Free |
Understanding the Different Tool Categories
Citation Generators (Scribbr, QuillBot, Citation Machine)
These web-based tools are best for creating new citations. You paste in a DOI or URL, and they produce a formatted reference entry. They’re very useful during the writing process but don’t check what you’ve already written. If you manually typed a citation or modified one during revision, these tools can’t tell you whether it’s correct.
Reference Managers (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote)
These tools store your source library and insert citations as you write, keeping formatting consistent. They’re powerful for managing a large collection of sources across multiple papers. However, they require you to work within their system from the start—they can’t validate manually typed citations, and they don’t check in-text citation formatting rules like et al. or ampersand usage.
Writing Assistants (Grammarly)
Grammarly now includes a citation generation feature, but its strength is grammar and style checking, not APA-specific citation validation. It won’t catch et al. errors, missing commas in parenthetical citations, or citation-to-reference mismatches.
Paper Formatters (PERRLA)
PERRLA focuses on formatting your entire paper to APA specifications, including margins, headings, and reference generation. It does a good job with overall paper structure but is primarily a formatter and generator rather than a validator of existing citations.
Citation Checkers (CiteLogos)
CiteLogos fills a specific gap that the other tools leave open: it validates the citations you’ve already written. It reads through your Word document, identifies every APA formatting error in your in-text citations and reference list, and places a comment at each error location explaining what’s wrong and how to fix it. This makes it complementary to generators and reference managers rather than a replacement for them.
The Best Approach: Use the Right Tool for Each Stage
- While writing: Use a reference manager (Zotero, Mendeley) or citation generator (Scribbr) to create properly formatted citations as you add sources.
- Before submission: Run CiteLogos to catch formatting errors, cross-reference mismatches, and in-text citation issues that accumulate during revision.
Add CiteLogos to Your Workflow
It takes 60 seconds to install and under a minute to scan your entire document. Free until June 2026.
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