URL to BibTeX Converter

How to Use the URL to BibTeX Converter

1. 1. Paste the addresses. One per line, up to 25. A bare www.example.org/page gets https:// added, and a DOI is treated as its doi.org link.
2. 2. Set the access date. It starts as today's date in your time zone; change it if you read the pages earlier.
3. 3. Choose BibTeX or biblatex, then convert. Each page is fetched and its metadata read: the title, the author and date when the page declares them, and the site name.
4. 4. Check, copy, download. Compare each entry with its page, fix what the metadata got wrong, then copy the entries or download references.bib.

The Two Forms

Classic BibTeX has no entry type for a web page, so the long-standing convention is @misc, with the address in howpublished and the access date in note — fields every standard style prints. For a BBC explainer, the converter writes:

@misc{poynting2013climate,
  author       = {Poynting, Mark},
  title        = {What is climate change? A really simple guide},
  howpublished = {\url{https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24021772}},
  year         = {2013},
  month        = sep,
  note         = {Accessed: 2026-10-05}
}

biblatex has a dedicated @online type, with url and urldate fields that it formats itself in the style you load:

@online{poynting2013climate,
  author  = {Poynting, Mark},
  title   = {What is climate change? A really simple guide},
  date    = {2013-09-23},
  url     = {https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24021772},
  urldate = {2026-10-05}
}

\url{…} comes from the url package, and hyperref defines one too. Load either in your preamble — \usepackage{url} or \usepackage{hyperref} — or LaTeX stops with an undefined control sequence. The command also lets a long address break across lines. If your style is natbib's plainnat or another style with a url field, write url = {…} instead of howpublished so the address is printed once, with a link.

Check What the Page Reported

• Titles with the site's name attached. Pages often title themselves Article – Site or Title | Site: Wikipedia's article on ISBNs comes back as ISBN - Wikipedia. Delete the suffix.
• Missing authors and dates. Only pages that declare them in their metadata get them. A page with no author is cited by its title, and its key comes from the site's name — the WHO's malaria fact sheet is keyed whofact.
• A date that is not the one you see. Page metadata usually carries the first publication date. If the page says it was updated since, decide which date your style wants.
• Pages that refuse automated readers. Many news and journal sites block requests that do not come from a browser, even though the page opens for you. Those lines are reported, so you can type the entry by hand.

Where the data comes from. The addresses are sent to CitationEasy's own lookup service, which fetches each page and reads its metadata — scholarly citation tags, Open Graph and JSON-LD. The access date is set in your browser.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I cite a website in BibTeX?

Use @misc with the author, the title, the address in howpublished = {\url{…}}, the year, and the access date in note. Paste the address above and the converter fills those fields from the page's metadata. With biblatex, use @online with url and urldate instead.

What is the difference between @misc and @online?

@online is biblatex's entry type for web resources, with url and urldate fields that biblatex formats itself. Classic BibTeX styles do not know @online, so with BibTeX you use @misc and put the address and access date in fields the styles print — howpublished and note.

Why does LaTeX report an undefined control sequence for \url?

Because \url is defined by the url and hyperref packages, not by LaTeX itself. Add \usepackage{url} or \usepackage{hyperref} to your preamble and compile again.

Do I need an access date?

It depends on the style. APA 7 wants a retrieval date only for pages designed to change that are not archived; MLA 9 recommends one, especially when the page has no date; Chicago 18 asks for one only when no publication or revision date can be found. Recording it costs nothing, so the converter always adds it.

Why did a page come back without an author or a date?

The converter reads only what the page declares in its metadata, and many pages name no author there or carry no date at all. Add the missing fields from the visible page, or leave them out if the page really has none.

Can I use this for journal articles?

It works, but a DOI gives a better entry. When a page's metadata includes a DOI, the results say so — convert it with the DOI to BibTeX converter for a complete @article with the journal, volume and pages.