Paste the link or ID on the front of a paper — a DOI (the doi.org link), PMID (PubMed ID), PMCID (PubMed Central ID), arXiv ID, ADS bibcode (NASA astrophysics), ISBN, ISSN, or eISSN — and get a formatted citation in seconds.
Vancouver, APA, AMA, IEEE, CSE, Chicago, Harvard, or any of 10,000+ CSL (Citation Style Language) styles. Export to BibTeX, RIS, EndNote, CSL JSON, and more — ready to copy or drop straight into Zotero, EndNote, or Mendeley.
Or pick a focused job: verify a citation · check open access · check for retraction · see all 10 free tools →
Drop in a DOI, PMID, PMCID, arXiv ID, ADS bibcode, ISBN, ISSN, or a link to a paper.
Vancouver, APA, AMA, IEEE, CSE, or any of 10,000+ CSL styles.
Copy the formatted citation, or export to BibTeX, RIS, EndNote, or CSL JSON for Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote, and more.
10,000+ citation styles · 9 export formats · 8 identifier types
Scholar Sidekick is also a public REST API and an open-source MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. Build it into your reference manager, your editorial pipeline, or your AI agent — no key required for light use.
curl -X POST \
https://scholar-sidekick.com/api/format \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"text":"10.1038/nphys1170","style":"vancouver"}'API docs · OpenAPI spec · Postman collection · MCP server · CLI
MCP lets Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor call Scholar Sidekick directly. The scholar CLI (npm i -g scholar-sidekick-cli) brings the same tools to your terminal and shell scripts.
Scholar Sidekick is a stateless, identifier-first citation API and tool set. It complements reference managers like Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote rather than replacing them, and skips the click-throughs and style menus of in-browser builders like ZoteroBib and Cite This For Me.
See the honest, source-cited tool comparisons — including vs Zotero · vs EndNote · best AI citation verifier — or the pricing and rate-limit tiers.
Every web tool is free with no account. The REST API and MCP server are free for light, anonymous use; for a monthly quota and higher rate limits, paid tiers are billed through RapidAPI. Every tier has the full feature set — only the monthly request quota and per-IP burst allowance scale with price.
| Plan | Price | Requests / month | Per-IP burst | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BASIC | Free | 500 | 1× (base) | Trying the API, hobby scripts, low-volume agents |
| PRO | $9 / mo | 10,000 | 2× | Indie apps, research tooling, steady production use |
| ULTRA | $49 / mo | 100,000 | 4× | High-traffic apps and batch citation pipelines |
| MEGA | $199 / mo | 500,000 | 8× | Platforms and bulk bibliography processing at scale |
Responses carry IETF RateLimit-* and legacy X-RateLimit-* headers, plus Retry-After on HTTP 429. Past the monthly quota, requests are billed per-request (BASIC/PRO $0.001, ULTRA $0.0008, MEGA $0.0005 each) — never hard-cut mid-month. Full pricing · manage plans on RapidAPI.
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