Best Reference Management Software with a Free Trial

Compare the Top Reference Management Software with a Free Trial as of November 2025

What is Reference Management Software with a Free Trial?

Reference management software helps researchers, students, and academics organize and manage their sources and citations for writing papers, articles, or reports. These tools enable users to collect, store, and categorize references from books, journals, websites, and other sources. They often include features for generating citations and bibliographies in various formats (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.), saving time and ensuring accuracy. Many reference management tools integrate with word processors, allowing users to easily insert citations and create reference lists directly within their documents. Additionally, these platforms often provide collaboration features, making it easy to share and manage research projects with team members. Compare and read user reviews of the best Reference Management software with a Free Trial currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

  • 1
    Citationsy

    Citationsy

    Citationsy

    Let’s say you’re writing an essay or thesis. You have a bunch of different references in your bibliography, but you don’t know exactly how to format them. Does the title go in Italics? What is et al. and when do you use it? What is APA 5th Edition and how is it different from the 6th Edition? Why are there different editions? This is where Citationsy comes in. What if you never had to think about any of this again? Citationsy lives in the cloud and is accessible from anywhere. Use our iPhone and Android apps to cite books on the go with our barcode scanner and add the Chrome or Firefox extensions to cite websites in 2 clicks. Your citation data is saved in the cloud and backed up every 10 minutes. Never worry about file formats, data loss, or updates ever again. Citationsy is a clean, annoyance-free environment to get your work done in. Say goodbye to flashing ads, notification, cookie banners, and downloads.
    Starting Price: $4.99 per month
  • 2
    EasyBib

    EasyBib

    EasyBib

    EasyBib is an intuitive information literacy platform that provides citation, note taking, and research tools that are easy-to-use and educational. EasyBib is not only accurate, fast, and comprehensive, but helps educators teach and students learn how to become effective and organized researchers. We cite according to the 8th and 7th ed. of MLA, 7th ed. of APA, and 16th and 17th ed. of Chicago (9th ed. Turabian). Many of our styles are powered by CSL, the Citation Styles Language from CitationStyles.org, which are licensed under a CC-BY-SA license. We check your paper against billions of sources using technology similar to Turnitin. Our institutional business, consisting of EasyBib School Edition and ResearchReady, provide solutions to build the foundation or writing skills and help students practice those skills.
    Starting Price: $9.95 per month
  • 3
    Bookends

    Bookends

    Sonny Software

    Bookends is a 64-bit full-featured and cost-effective bibliography, reference, and information management system for students and professionals. Bookends requires Mac macOS 10.13 or later (including Catalina, macOS 10.15). Bookends is unicode-savvy, so you can mix Roman (English, French, German, etc.) and non-Roman (Japanese, Greek, Hebrew, etc.) characters. A highly configurable, interactive, and editable interface lets you work with reference information the way you want. View Groups or Term Lists (Authors, Keywords, etc.) on the left. In the concise reference view on the right, arrange fields in any order, show just the ones that you find useful, and label them as you like. Editing or entering information is a single click away. Show attachments (pdfs, text files, images, etc.), or use the reference’s URL to show live web pages of its contents. Notecards let you enter, edit, and rearrange your thoughts, and make citing pages in footnotes a snap.
    Starting Price: $39.99 one-time payment
  • 4
    NoodleTools

    NoodleTools

    NoodleTools

    NoodleTools is an online research management platform that promotes critical thinking and authentic research. Students stay organized as they evaluate information, build accurate citations, archive source material, take notes, outline topics, and prepare to write. Three differentiated levels support individual students across grades and abilities. The classroom environment allows librarians and teachers to provide feedback, monitor individual contributions to group work, and view statistics about source use. In contrast to an auto-cite, auto-evaluate product, we support students to engage deeply in research and produce original work. NoodleTools is also designed with online student privacy in mind. Recognize and evaluate relevant, credible sources. Generate accurate MLA, APA, and Chicago references with personal help from experts. Make connections, develop original ideas and articulate arguments.
    Starting Price: $15 per year
  • 5
    scite.ai
    scite is a Brooklyn-based startup that helps researchers better discover and evaluate scientific articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by researchers from dozens of countries and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health. Improve the discoverability of your articles and raise the profile of your publications by indexing them with scite. scite reports attract thousands of users a week and generate significant traffic for publisher partners. Support current authors and attract new ones by providing them with data on how their research is being received, whether its been supported, or contrasted and the overall context of citations to their work.
    Starting Price: $7.99 per month
  • 6
    ReadCube Papers
    Search across your favorite scholarly search engines (in app and via our handy browser extensions) and enjoy 1-click downloads to quickly add references & full-text PDFs to your library. Check out our personalized recommendation engine and related article feeds to ensure you never miss an important paper again. Papers helps you focus on the task at hand with our full-screen Enhanced PDF reader. Highlight, underline, strike through, make inline notes, draw and add sticky notes. Switch between different documents with tabs, view supplemental files or jump to referenced articles - conveniently linked inline. Papers automatically identifies and matches imported articles with not only the complete metadata, but also available supplemental data, citations and full-text (if available). Papers users can create private shared collections to collaborate with up to 30 other Papers users at a given time. Simply add your collaborator by email and they will be added to your shared folder.
    Starting Price: $3 per month
  • 7
    nXr

    nXr

    NXR Systems

    nXr reference manager breaks away from the existing managers by optimally integrating three modules (nXr.iNote, nXr.iLibrary and nXr.iCite) to facilitate: - Faster note and image collection in a note and image searchable library - Direct citation based on notes, images as well as article titles for accurate citing or quoting. - Easy sharing of all cited materials (e.g., notes or images) for easy and accurate reviewing and reading. You can also create a single user–group switchable library for your research group which automatically anonymously integrate all group articles and annotations and make them available to all group users. To become the best reference manager equipped with next-generation tools for performing reproducible impactful research by managing information overload, nXr strives to incorporate new features supported by data analytics and AI.
    Starting Price: $3/month/user
  • 8
    Sourcely

    Sourcely

    Sourcely

    Paste your essay or paper to find, summarize, and add credible academic sources. Sourcely is your AI-powered academic search assistant, offering access to over 200 million papers and advanced search filters. It streamlines research by finding credible sources, summarizing them, and exporting citations instantly, helping you save time and improve quality. Our source-finding tool simplifies the process so you can find your sources quickly and easily. Simply paste your essay or paragraph and let Sourcely do the rest. Hit the button, and watch Sourcely to find all suitable sources. Sourcely highlights citation-worthy parts of your text and provides relevant sources for easy referencing. Sourcely also allows users to download free PDFs of many of the sources it lists. Store and organize your citations in your personal library for easy access anytime. Save time and effort by quickly getting a general overview/summary of a source material.
    Starting Price: $7 one-time payment
  • 9
    Sorc'd

    Sorc'd

    Sorc'd

    We created Sorc'd to help people: be more productive; strengthen and share relevant information from reliable sources; and be less frustrated with the overwhelming amount of information. Recall digestible pieces of information from your cloud-based account or discover new ones from others. Add snippets from your online repository to your writing or share via social channels. Capture snippets from your browser when researching with our free Chrome extension. Then integrate those snippets into your content directly from Google Docs, Google Slides and Google Sheets. Sorc'd is a free Google add-on for the Google Office Suite offering the best and most convenient way to: 1.) import snippets of valuable information directly from Sorc'd into a Google Doc, Google Slide or Google Sheet, and 2.) export snippets of information from within a Google Doc, Slide or Sheet that you may want to reference later, import into new content, share with colleagues or directly through social outlets.
    Starting Price: $15 per month
  • 10
    Citavi

    Citavi

    Lumivero

    Whether you just need a quick bibliography, you're searching a team library of 20,000 sources, or you want to keep track of notes, Citavi's tools help you work faster and more effectively. Big projects with tons of sources can feel overwhelming. Break your work down into tasks, keep track of important information from your articles, and sift through your sources to find the ones you really need – alone or in a team. Citavi is the only reference management program for teams that gives you the option of storing your information on your own server instead of in the cloud. Individuals can also choose between local and online projects. Citavi automatically creates backups so you never lose your information. Say goodbye to wasted time formatting citations and bibliographies. Citavi offers over 10,000 citation styles: APA, Chicago, MLA, Turabian, etc., etc. Need one that's not there? You can create it yourself or ask us.
  • 11
    Docear

    Docear

    Docear

    Docear is a unique solution to academic literature management, i.e. it helps you organizing, creating, and discovering academic literature. Among others, Docear offers a single-section user-interface that allows the most comprehensive organization of your literature. With Docear, you can sort documents into categories; you can sort annotations (comments, bookmarks, and highlighted text from PDFs) into categories; you can sort annotations within PDFs; and you can view multiple annotations of multiple documents, in multiple categories, at once. A ‘literature suite concept‘ that combines several tools in a single application (pdf management, reference management, mind mapping, etc.). This allows you to draft your own papers, assignments, thesis, etc. directly in Docear and copy annotations and references from your collection directly into your draft. A recommender system that helps you to discover new literature.
  • 12
    Paperpile

    Paperpile

    Paperpile

    Paperpile offers clean and simple and reference management for the web. Sync your library to all your devices and read and annotate like on paper on your iPad, iPhone, or Android device. Cite your papers in Google Docs and Microsoft Word. Organize your papers with folders, labels and stars. Search your library in real-time. Automatically fix references with incomplete data and clean up duplicates. Download PDFs with one click and sync them directly to your Google Drive. Your files are available immediately on all your devices. Google Drive provides enough storage for even the largest libraries. Highlight the important parts of your papers in different colors. Add comments right where they belong. Use private sharing links to share with everyone, not just Paperpile users. With Paperpile you now can also manage your references collaboratively, and Google Docs makes it easy to collaborate with your colleagues on a paper.
    Starting Price: $2.99 per month
  • 13
    Biblioscape

    Biblioscape

    Biblioscape

    With Biblioscape, you will never need to enter a reference by typing. Just click the "Internet" button while in a reference folder. There are 40 plus popular bibliographic database sites listed each with a short instruction. You can just search the database, select the records you want to download and make a few clicks to capture those records directly into your database. There are many sites supporting direct export of bibliographic records and you can use any web browser to send download records directly into Biblioscape database. Search against university and public libraries catalog inside Biblioscape. Search results will be automatically downloaded into the "Online Search" folder of your Biblioscape database. There are 2,500 plus library connection files pre-made. You can add more easily in Biblioscape.
    Starting Price: $39 one-time payment
  • 14
    wizdom.ai

    wizdom.ai

    wizdom.ai

    With comprehensive and current insights, wizdom.ai helps you explore the rapidly evolving research landscape to assist with your next ground breaking idea. Have all the critical insights about research at your institution and globally, to monitor, evaluate and boost your performance. wizdom.ai provides publishers invaluable intelligence about global research publishing to help them distinguish the most promising research. Track powerful, in-depth analytics about your complete publications portfolio including authors, impact, subject areas and competition. Discover emerging research areas through analysis of global publications, citations and grant trends to launch new journal. Integrate the world’s largest research knowledge graph right on your website to enrich your content and empower readers. Lead your industry using comprehensive analytics to determine and shape the future of your breakthrough research.
  • 15
    CiteRight

    CiteRight

    CiteRight

    Knowledge tools for careful litigators in a hurry. Draft Faster. Move from a precedent to a finished draft by cutting out the repetitive, mindless work. Automate Citations. Produce perfectly formatted citations and books of authority with CiteRight’s Microsoft Word plugin. Recover Lost Knowledge. Get time-consuming work done so that you can focus on what really matters. Explore. Citation Tools Research and writing. Together at last. CiteRight helps you save cases from online legal databases and makes them available right where you are — inside Microsoft Word. Click on a case to cite it automatically. No Blue Book or McGill Guide required! One-button books of authorities. Done writing your factum? Generate a perfect book of authorities in seconds. Want to make a last-minute change? Click the button again. CiteRight manages your document assembly so you don’t have to. No more searching for that case you remember using that one time.
    Starting Price: $35 per user per month
  • 16
    Qiqqa

    Qiqqa

    Quantisle

    Qiqqa keeps all your PDFs secure and makes them instantly accessible and searchable across all your devices. Automatic identification, tagging and categorization of your PDFs means you never have to go hunting for that missing paper again. Capture all your tags, comments, highlights and annotations while you read your PDFs inside Qiqqa, online at your workstation or offline on the go. Then when you want to review what you have read, use powerful annotation reports so you never again forget those important snippets of information. Qiqqa guides you through your literature by understanding your research niche. It then highlights the most specific and the most influential papers in that niche. Qiqqa also lets you find what next to read by following citations, authors and keywords. Using Qiqqa's themes and annotation reports, you are literally presented with everything you should cite in each section of your paper.
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