Citation Formatter

Fill in the source details once and get both an APA 7 and an MLA 9 citation, with correct author inversion, italics and punctuation. Covers websites, books, journal articles and AI tools.

Source type

Year of publication

Authors (leave blank if none)

For an organization or company as author, put the full name in the "Last name" box and leave "First name(s)" empty.

Title of page or article

Website name

URL (optional for books)

Access date (optional)

APA 7

MLA 9

Citing AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude and others)

APA 7 guidance: treat the company as author and the model as the titled work, with a bracketed description. Quote or describe your prompt in the text of your paper, and note that AI outputs are non-retrievable, so the reference points to the tool itself:

Anthropic. (2026). Claude (Opus 5 version) [Large language model]. https://claude.ai

OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (June 2026 version) [Large language model]. https://chatgpt.com

MLA 9 guidance: MLA uses its template of core elements: describe the prompt as the title of the source, name the tool in italics as the container, then version, company, date generated, and the URL:

"Explain retrieval-augmented generation in simple terms" prompt. Claude, Opus 5 version, Anthropic, 29 July 2026, claude.ai.

"Summarize the plot of Beowulf" prompt. ChatGPT, June 2026 version, OpenAI, 29 July 2026, chatgpt.com.

Both styles also expect you to say in your text (or an appendix) how you used the tool. Many instructors and journals add their own AI-use policies on top, so always check the assignment or venue rules first.

Verify edge cases: this tool implements the common APA 7 and MLA 9 patterns (author inversion, italics, punctuation, retrieval and access dates) correctly for typical sources. Unusual cases, such as 21+ authors, translated works, editions, DOIs versus URLs, or corporate authors that match the publisher, have extra rules. For those, double-check against the official APA Publication Manual (7th ed.) or the MLA Handbook (9th ed.). Remember that APA uses sentence case for article and page titles while MLA uses title case; this tool keeps whatever capitalization you type.