BibMe – a free alternative

Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles

Select a source type:

What is BibMe?

Bib Me is an online references and citations generator. Its services include the BibMe APA, BibMe MLA, BibMe Chicago, BibMe Vancouver, BibMe IEEE, and a range of other generators for different international citation styles.

What are the pros and cons of BibMe?

Pros:

  • BibMe is used by many students;
  • it allows citing in several thousand citation styles;
  • BibMe provides a plagiarism checker (although its quality is disputed).

Cons:

  • the BibMe citation generators have major flaws in terms of correctness (for example, the APA BibMe generator produces inaccuracies even when referencing a simple book);
  • BibMe is very user-unfriendly, and creating references can be too painful and take too much time;
  • BibMe fails to provide any correct ordering of references in a bibliography (which is different for every citation style);
  • BibMe does not provide the formatting of your bibliography page;
  • the registration on the website will require you to enter all your payment details (and your funds will be debited automatically if you forget to unsubscribe within 3 days);
  • the prices are high;
  • the service does not adapt its references to your particular country, which means that the references will be generated primarily in English, and the data you submit will be only applicable to the US.

How is Grafiati better than BibMe?

The flaws in the quality of references and citations at BibMe are due to the use of the open-source code (which is often erroneous) applied by other services such as Zotero, Mendeley, Citethisforme, etc. In fact, BibMe simply provides the same code and the same results to you, and you pay mostly for an interface different than the one of Zotero.

We at Grafiati use a completely different approach. Instead of copying 8,000 citation styles from the open-source code, which we would be unable to either support or modify, we are steadily delving into the depths of the publications manuals of APA, MLA, Chicago Style, and so on, and we write all our algorithms from scratch, which allows us delivering an unpreceded level of quality in bibliographic management.

So, why would you use Grafiati and not BibMe?

  • We produce citations and references as accurate and as close to the requirements of the chosen citation style as possible.
  • While keeping all simple, we allow much more depth and accuracy of citations: articles from online journals, legal citations for countries other than the US, archival documents with descriptive titles, and so on: all these features are available only from Grafiati.
  • We offer great details for each particular citation style: for example, in contrast to the APA BibMe generator, we automatically identify whether the dissertation or thesis you cite is an unpublished work and modify the reference appropriately.
  • We offer the best user-friendliness: intuitive interface, help messages, etc.
  • In contrast to Bib Me APA and other of the BibMe generators, we deliver the best ordering engine that will sort all your references in accordance with APA, MLA, Chicago, or any other style you choose.
  • We format your bibliography page in accordance with the rules of the chosen style (margins, indents, font size, etc.).
  • We offer more moderate prices for a flexible and personalised service. And you can also use Grafiati as a free citation generator with some limitations.
  • We offer world-class adaptation to all devices: not only responsive design but also unique user experience.
  • We have multiple tools to make your citations rapid and correct: from the correction of word case in titles depending on the chosen citation style to the automated retrieval of metadata from webpages.
  • We are constantly updating our website with new features based on the requests of our users.

How to use your bibliographic management service?

As we said, we focus on user-friendliness. It would totally suffice for you to go to our homepage and try it out by choosing the source type you want to cite: our interface will guide you throughout the rest of the process.

Other publications:

All publications