Free reference & citation checker

Don’t let a fabricated citation reach your reviewer.

At least 1 in 2 bibliographies we check carries a citation that fails verification — a hallucinated DOI, a wrong year, an outdated preprint, a retraction. Drop your manuscript below — or paste your reference list — and RefRunner checks every entry against Crossref, OpenAlex, Google Books, and OpenLibrary. The whole list, in minutes, without uploading your paper to our servers.

or, what do you need to do?

Convert between citation stylesAPA ↔ MLA ↔ Chicago — 9,000+ CSL styles Search for papers & build a listFind sources and assemble a clean reference list from scratch

Free — 20 references, no account, no accountRuns in your browserNo AI — real database lookups

What every check covers

Catches fabricated references

Verifies every citation against real academic databases — the hallmark of AI-invented sources is a DOI or title that simply doesn't resolve.

DOI verification

Every DOI is checked against Crossref and OpenAlex. Wrong ones are flagged with the corrected version side-by-side; missing ones are found.

Retraction detection

Live retraction status on every reference — not a stale static list. A retracted paper is never silently passed.

Preprint-to-publication updates

Detects when a cited preprint has since been formally published and fills in the new year, volume, issue, and page numbers.

Any citation style

Export in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago, or any of 9,000+ CSL styles — the same formatter Zotero uses.

Nothing leaves your browser

Your manuscript is never uploaded. All processing is local; the only external calls are to public academic databases.