Generate accurate APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard and IEEE citations from a URL, DOI, or ISBN. Free, no ads, no sign-up — every source verified against real databases.
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`The free citation tool that checks your sources are real` > Corroba is a free, no-ads citation generator that's actually accurate — every source is checked against real databases (Crossref, PubMed, OpenAlex), so it never invents one. It also verifies whole bibliographies, catches fake AI citations, finds free PDFs, and more.
> Hey Product Hunt 👋
> I'm Colin, and I built Corroba because every citation tool I've used felt *hostile*. EasyBib and its cousins bury you in ads and pop-ups, paywall basic APA, and dark-pattern you into subscriptions. And now ChatGPT will happily hand you a perfectly-formatted citation for a paper that doesn't exist.
> So I made the opposite: a citation tool that's free, clean, and — most importantly — **honest.**
> Corroba never invents a citation. Every source is pulled from real bibliographic databases (Crossref, OpenAlex, PubMed, Open Library), so it's grounded in a real record, not made up. Paste a link, DOI, ISBN, or title → get a correct citation in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, or any of 10,000+ styles.
> Then it goes further than a generator: > - **Verify** — paste a bibliography and it checks every reference against real databases, flagging anything it *can't* find, that's mismatched, broken, or retracted. (Perfect for sanity-checking an AI-assisted paper.) > - **Source quality** — tells you if a source is peer-reviewed, a preprint, or just a webpage. > - **Integrity** — checks your writing against the sources you actually cited. > - Plus little things I always wished existed: convert a citation between styles, find a *legal* free PDF of a paywalled paper, and an "explain this citation" mode that teaches you **why** it's formatted the way it is.
> Everything core is **free forever — no sign-up, no ads.** There's dark mode and a dyslexia-friendly font too.
> I'm a solo maker and this is very much a labor of love. I'd genuinely love your feedback, your best citation-tool horror story, and any styles or features you want me to add
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How does the verification actually work when you paste a DOI — are you checking against Crossref in real time, or pulling from a cached database? Curious how often it misses something newer.
Great question. It's a live lookup — paste a DOI and Corroba resolves it against the official DOI system and Crossref in real time, not a private snapshot that goes stale. There's a short cache purely for speed (re-checking the same DOI is instant), but anything it hasn't seen before goes straight to the live source. Since DOIs are registered the moment they're minted, new papers show up almost immediately — the only real lag is if a publisher hasn't finished depositing full metadata yet, and even then you get whatever's officially registered rather than a guess.
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How does it actually verify sources against real databases under the hood, especially for obscure ISBNs or paywalled articles? Curious whether it's hitting CrossRef and OpenAlex directly or pulling from something else.
Yep — it hits the authoritative sources directly and routes by identifier: layered in for extra signals like citation counts and indexing. Paywalls actually aren't a problem, because the paywall is on the full text, not the citation metadata — authors, title, journal, and year are openly available through Crossref/OpenAlex even when the PDF is locked. For genuinely obscure ISBNs, we cover most of the long tail — and if nothing turns up, it tells you instead of inventing something. That "never guess" rule is kind of the whole point.
Report
Finally a citation tool that actually pulls from real databases instead of guessing. Threw a messy DOI at it and got a clean APA entry in under a second, no sign-up walls.
Thank you — that's exactly the reaction I was hoping for. "Real databases instead of guessing" is the entire reason it exists; I got tired of tools that invent a plausible-looking citation and hope you don't check. Glad the messy DOI just worked — and yep, no sign-up walls. If you ever want to stress-test it, paste a whole reference list into Verify and it'll flag anything fake, broken, or retracted.
`The free citation tool that checks your sources are real`
> Corroba is a free, no-ads citation generator that's actually accurate — every source is checked against real databases (Crossref, PubMed, OpenAlex), so it never invents one. It also verifies whole bibliographies, catches fake AI citations, finds free PDFs, and more.
> Hey Product Hunt 👋
> I'm Colin, and I built Corroba because every citation tool I've used felt *hostile*. EasyBib and its cousins bury you in ads and pop-ups, paywall basic APA, and dark-pattern you into subscriptions. And now ChatGPT will happily hand you a perfectly-formatted citation for a paper that doesn't exist.
> So I made the opposite: a citation tool that's free, clean, and — most importantly — **honest.**
> Corroba never invents a citation. Every source is pulled from real bibliographic databases (Crossref, OpenAlex, PubMed, Open Library), so it's grounded in a real record, not made up. Paste a link, DOI, ISBN, or title → get a correct citation in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, or any of 10,000+ styles.
> Then it goes further than a generator:
> - **Verify** — paste a bibliography and it checks every reference against real databases, flagging anything it *can't* find, that's mismatched, broken, or retracted. (Perfect for sanity-checking an AI-assisted paper.)
> - **Source quality** — tells you if a source is peer-reviewed, a preprint, or just a webpage.
> - **Integrity** — checks your writing against the sources you actually cited.
> - Plus little things I always wished existed: convert a citation between styles, find a *legal* free PDF of a paywalled paper, and an "explain this citation" mode that teaches you **why** it's formatted the way it is.
> Everything core is **free forever — no sign-up, no ads.** There's dark mode and a dyslexia-friendly font too.
> I'm a solo maker and this is very much a labor of love. I'd genuinely love your feedback, your best citation-tool horror story, and any styles or features you want me to add
How does the verification actually work when you paste a DOI — are you checking against Crossref in real time, or pulling from a cached database? Curious how often it misses something newer.
@emrahoizm
How does it actually verify sources against real databases under the hood, especially for obscure ISBNs or paywalled articles? Curious whether it's hitting CrossRef and OpenAlex directly or pulling from something else.
@emircankkksggd
Finally a citation tool that actually pulls from real databases instead of guessing. Threw a messy DOI at it and got a clean APA entry in under a second, no sign-up walls.
@zehra108697