CiteTrue pricing, free plan and limits
Citation checker that matches each reference to databases such as Crossref and OpenAlex and flags fabricated ones; free to try with daily credits.
- Best for
- Graduate student
- Not for
- Team needing EU-only data processing
Should you use CiteTrue?
Use it to catch invented references from AI assistants before you submit or review a paper. Skip it if you need EU-only processing, a SOC 2 vendor, or checks on books and theses. The free plan covers a short reference list, but a verdict is evidence to confirm by hand.
An MCP server and REST API that let an AI assistant verify its own references.
Lookups against many bibliographic databases and a credit-metered API give some stickiness, but the check itself is a commodity that several rival citation checkers offer.
Also for
- Journal editor
- Research supervisor
Show 3 more
- Undergraduate and PhD students checking references before submission
- Journal reviewers, editors and supervisors checking a manuscript before relying on it
- Researchers who use AI assistants to draft and need to catch invented sources
Also not for
- Researcher whose sources are mostly books or theses
Main trade-off
Real but unindexed sources, such as theses, books and recent or non-English work, can be flagged as not found.
CiteTrue pricing
| Plan | Monthly price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | 30 credits per day, Batch limit of 30 references, Shared credit pool across Citation Checker, Citation Finder, Paper Draft and AI Humanizer |
| Plus | $9.99/mo | 1,000 credits per month; every paid plan checks up to 1,000 references per batch, Yearly billing: $5.99 a month, $71.88 charged per year |
| Pro | $19.99/mo | 3,000 credits per month, Yearly billing: $11.99 a month, $143.88 charged per year |
| Max | $79.99/mo | 20,000 credits per month, Yearly billing: $47.99 a month, $575.88 charged per year |
| Team Plus | Custom | $500 a year, billed annually, 10 seats sharing 20,000 credits per month |
| Team Pro | Custom | $4,000 a year, billed annually, 50 seats sharing 200,000 credits per month |
| Team Max | Custom | $35,000 a year, billed annually, 500 seats sharing 2,000,000 credits per month |
Prices read on citetrue.com/pricing, in US dollars. Individual plans are cheaper billed yearly; team plans are billed annually only.
Before you commit
- Tricky references cost up to 5 credits instead of 1.
- Credit pack credits expire six months after purchase.
What CiteTrue does
CiteTrue is a citation checker for academic writing. It resolves each reference against bibliographic databases such as Crossref, OpenAlex and PubMed, returns an Authentic, Unsure or Inauthentic verdict with a confidence score, and is available on the web, as a Chrome extension, a Mac app, an API and an MCP server.
Checks against 16 named sources
References are matched to Crossref, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, PubMed, arXiv, CORE, Open Library, Google Scholar and publisher indexes such as IEEE, ACM, Springer and Elsevier.
Three verdicts with a confidence score
Authentic means a matching publication was found, Unsure means a candidate could not be fully confirmed, and Inauthentic means no match, most often a fabricated or badly mistyped reference.
Escalation for tricky references
A garbled title or obscure source automatically brings in more data sources and analysis, at up to 5 credits instead of 1.
Suggested replacement citations
When a citation cannot be found or looks fabricated, the pricing page lists a 5-credit option that suggests the best-matching real reference.
Show all 7 features
Citation Finder
Paste a paragraph and get peer-reviewed sources for its claims, drawn from the same credit pool.
API and MCP server
A streaming REST endpoint, POST /verify/v2, and the npm package @citetrue/mcp-server with verify and get_credits tools let assistants and scripts check references.
Extension, Mac app and 11 languages
Besides the web app there is a Chrome extension and a Mac app, and the interface is offered in 11 languages.
Works with
- Chrome extension
- Mac app
- REST API
- MCP server (@citetrue/mcp-server)
Capabilities
- Citation verification
- Hallucination detection
- Academic writing
- Research integrity
- Reference checking
- MCP
- API
Strengths and limits
Strengths
- CiteTrue says every verdict traces back to a lookup in a bibliographic database rather than a language model's opinion, so a flagged reference comes with a named record to compare against (About page).
- The free plan gives 30 credits a day, and its pricing FAQ says a typical research paper has 20 to 50 citations, so a short reference list fits within a day or two without paying.
- Its About page states its own limits in plain words, including that coverage is uneven and that it is not a plagiarism checker, so a reader knows what a verdict cannot show.
- Both a REST API and an MCP server exist, so a coding or research assistant can run the check from inside a chat.
Limits
- CiteTrue's About page says very recent work, non-English publications, books, theses and grey literature are indexed less completely, so a real source can come back as not found.
- Its GDPR page says all processing happens in the United States, that there is no EEA data residency, no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certificate and no automatic maximum retention period for documents.
- Two CiteTrue pages disagree on refunds: the pricing page says paid purchases are generally non-refundable, while the help FAQ promises a 30-day money-back guarantee on paid plans.
- One credit per reference is a floor: tricky references can cost up to 5, so the credit cost of a long reference list cannot be known in advance.
- Verdict labels differ across CiteTrue pages: the About page says Inauthentic, while the homepage demo and the help FAQ say Not Found, so a screenshot or a colleague's report may use a different word for the same result.
CiteTrue alternatives
The nearest AI tools on Hokai for the same job.
| Tool | Price from | Free plan | Runs on | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CiteTrue This page | $9.99/mo | Yes | Web · Mac | 3.7 |
 QuillBotAI writing tools for paraphrasing, grammar checking, summarizing, plagiarism detection, and AI detection. | $4.17/mo | Yes | Web · iOS · Android · Mac · Windows | 4.3 |
 DeepLAI translation platform for text, documents and live speech, with a free plan and paid Translator plans billed annually. DeepL says more than 200,000 businesses use it. | $7.49/mo | Yes | Web · iOS · Android · Mac · Windows | 4.2 |
 MachineTranslation.comAI translator from Tomedes that runs your text past DeepL, Google, ChatGPT, Claude and other engines and returns the majority answer, in 330+ languages. | $19/mo | Yes | Web | 3.9 |
CiteTrue facts
- Compliance
- gdpr
- Works offline
- No
- Price band
- Budget
Data and privacy
Proprietary
Questions about CiteTrue
How much does CiteTrue cost?
The Free plan is $0. Plus is $9.99 a month for 1,000 credits, Pro is $19.99 for 3,000 and Max is $79.99 for 20,000, or $5.99, $11.99 and $47.99 a month when billed yearly. Credit packs start at $9.99 for 500 credits and team plans at $500 a year for 10 seats. Most references cost 1 credit and tricky ones up to 5.
Is CiteTrue free to use?
Yes. The free plan includes 30 verification credits every day, with a batch limit of 30 references, and the allowance resets daily while paid plans reset monthly. It also covers the vendor's other tools, because credits are shared across them.
Why was my citation marked Not Found?
CiteTrue's help FAQ gives four reasons: the reference may be fabricated, contain spelling errors, be too recent to be indexed, or simply not be in its databases. It recommends checking such references by hand, because no automated system is perfect.
Can CiteTrue catch fake references from ChatGPT?
That is its stated purpose. It looks each reference up in bibliographic databases, and an Inauthentic verdict means no matching publication was found, which points to an invented or garbled reference. Because an unindexed real work can also be flagged, treat Unsure and Inauthentic results as leads to confirm.
Where does CiteTrue process my documents, and is it GDPR compliant?
Per its GDPR page, processing is in the United States only, under a data processing agreement with Standard Contractual Clauses for every account. The vendor lists no EEA data residency and no third-party certificate such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001, and it promises breach notice within 72 hours. Pick CiteTrue if processing in the United States is acceptable to you; otherwise ask the vendor first.
About CiteTrue
CiteTrue is a citation verification tool for academic writing, built and maintained by the CiteTrue team, which its About page does not name further. Paste a reference list or upload a paper and each reference is looked up in bibliographic databases. Its homepage markets it as the go-to citation checker for academia, and its tagline is about catching AI-hallucinated references.
Read the full background
CiteTrue says it does not ask a language model whether a paper exists, so each verdict traces back to a database lookup. The same account also runs Citation Finder, Paper Draft and an AI Humanizer from one credit pool, and the MCP documentation shows setups for Claude, Cursor and Windsurf.
Its homepage speaks to undergraduates and PhD students before submission and to reviewers, editors and professors before review. It claims over two million citations checked and over 40,000 scholars, which are vendor figures Hokai could not verify. Hokai read the homepage demo on 11 November 2026: it checks three sample references, flags a year mismatch on the Piketty entry and marks a garbled third reference Not Found. Hokai did not run a check of its own.
Look elsewhere in three cases. CiteTrue's About page says it is not a plagiarism checker and that a verdict is evidence, not a ruling. Its GDPR page puts all processing in the United States and lists no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certificate, so a team that needs EU-only processing or a certified vendor should ask first. For finding papers on a topic rather than checking a reference list, Hokai files Consensus under AI search and discovery platforms. Citely, whose page says it checks up to 80 references at a time, and Sourcely, which says it verifies against more than 200 million papers, are rival citation checkers that Hokai has not listed yet. See also AI writing assistants.
Sources and guides
Official sources
- CiteTrue official site Vendor
- CiteTrue user guide Docs
- CiteTrue API reference Docs
- CiteTrue MCP server docs Docs
Product facts on this page (pricing, plans, integrations, compliance) are read from CiteTrue's own pages and documentation. The verdict is Hokai's reading of them, not the vendor's claim.
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