APA citation checker: are your APA references real and right?
Paste an APA 7 reference list, or your draft with its References section, or upload it as Word. Each reference is looked up by its title, authors and year, and every (Author, Year) citation in the text is matched to the list.
Up to 25 references a check, 3 checks a day.
How it works
Paste or upload
A reference list, a .bib or .ris file, or the whole draft as Word or PDF.
Each work looked up
In Crossref, where publishers register their papers, then OpenAlex for books and the rest, by DOI or by title, author and year.
See what to fix
Found, found with a different year or authors, or not found, and any retraction flagged.
Records from Crossref and OpenAlex; retractions from Retraction Watch, through Crossref. Nothing you paste or upload is kept.
Keep your library in Zotero?
Right-click items or a whole collection and choose Check references with hedwigai. The check opens here and starts at once. Free, for Zotero 7 and 8; nothing in your library changes.
How do I check my APA citations?
Paste the References section, one reference a line, and run the check. Each comes back found, found with a different year or first author, or not found, and any retracted paper is flagged. Paste the whole draft instead and the in-text citations are checked too: (Smith et al., 2020) and Smith (2020) with no entry in the list, and entries the text never cites.
Does it fix APA formatting?
No. It does not restyle italics, capitals or punctuation, and a reference can be perfectly formatted and still name a paper that does not exist. That is the mistake an examiner or reviewer counts against you, and the one a formatter never catches. Each found reference links to its record, so the year, authors and journal can be copied from there.
What APA mistakes does it find?
A reference to a work no registry knows, which is what an AI writing tool’s invented references look like. A real work cited with the wrong year or first author. A DOI registered to a different paper. The same work listed twice. A retracted paper. And in a draft, citations and references that no longer match each other.
Does it read APA 6 and other styles?
Yes. It reads the author, year and title of a reference wherever the style puts them, so APA 6, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver and a .bib file all check the same way.
What does it cost?
This page is free: 3 checks a day, up to 25 references each, no account. Nothing you paste is kept. Sign in and hedwigai also reads each sentence that cites a work against that work.