To cite a page on a website you need four things: the author (a person or an organization), the date the page was published or last updated, the title of the page, and the URL. APA, MLA and Chicago all use those pieces and add the name of the website. They differ in order, punctuation and what goes in italics. The examples below use an invented site and author so the pattern is easy to see. Swap in your own source.
Quick templates
| Style | Reference format | In the text |
|---|---|---|
| APA 7 | Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. URL | (Author, Year) |
| MLA 9 | Author Last, First. “Title of Page.” Website Name, Day Month Year, URL. | (Author) |
| Chicago (bibliography) | Author Last, First. “Title of Page.” Website Name. Month Day, Year. URL. | Numbered footnote |
What you need before you start
- The author. Look under the headline and at the bottom of the page. If no person is named, the organization that runs the site is usually the author.
- The date. Use the published or “last updated” date of the page itself. Do not use the copyright year in the site footer, which covers the whole site.
- The page title, as it appears at the top of the page.
- The website name, which is often different from the organization’s legal name and from the URL.
- The URL of the exact page, without tracking parameters.
- The date you read it, in case the page has no date or changes often.
How to cite a website in APA 7
APA puts the page title in italics and in sentence case: only the first word, proper nouns and the first word after a colon are capitalized. The site name follows in plain text, then the URL with no period after it.
A page with a named author
Rivera, J. (2024, March 5). How volcanoes form: A beginner’s guide. Example Science. https://www.example.org/volcanoes
A page by an organization
When the organization is both the author and the site name, APA says to leave the site name out so it is not repeated:
Example Health Agency. (2023, June 12). Sleep and study performance. https://www.example.org/sleep
A page that changes over time
Add a retrieval date only when the content is designed to change and is not archived, such as a live statistics page:
Example Health Agency. (n.d.). Current vaccination figures. Retrieved October 4, 2026, from https://www.example.org/figures
In-text citation
- Parenthetical: (Rivera, 2024) or (Example Health Agency, 2023)
- Narrative: Rivera (2024) explains that…
- Direct quote from a page with no page numbers: point to the section or paragraph, as in (Rivera, 2024, para. 4).
These formats match the webpage reference examples on the APA Style site and the Purdue OWL guide to electronic sources in APA.
How to cite a website in MLA 9
MLA puts the page title in quotation marks and the website name in italics, as the “container” of the page. Titles use headline capitalization. The date is written day, month, year, with most months abbreviated. MLA recommends leaving https:// off the URL.
Rivera, Jordan. “How Volcanoes Form: A Beginner’s Guide.” Example Science, 5 Mar. 2024, www.example.org/volcanoes.
If the publisher of the site is different from the site name, add it after the site name. If they are the same, give the name once. When there is no publication date, add the date you accessed the page at the end:
“Sleep and Study Performance.” Example Health Agency, www.example.org/sleep. Accessed 4 Oct. 2026.
In-text citation
Use whatever comes first in the Works Cited entry: the author’s last name or a shortened title in quotation marks. Web pages have no page numbers, so nothing else is needed.
- (Rivera)
- (“Sleep and Study”)
The MLA Style Center and the Purdue OWL page on electronic sources in MLA have more worked examples.
How to cite a website in Chicago
The Chicago Manual of Style says it is often enough to describe a web page in your sentence, for example “As of March 5, 2024, the Example Science site stated…”. When your instructor wants a formal citation, the notes and bibliography system uses a footnote and, if required, a bibliography entry. Page titles go in quotation marks, and the website name is not italicized.
Footnote
1. Jordan Rivera, “How Volcanoes Form: A Beginner’s Guide,” Example Science, March 5, 2024, https://www.example.org/volcanoes.
Shortened note
2. Rivera, “How Volcanoes Form.”
Bibliography entry
Rivera, Jordan. “How Volcanoes Form: A Beginner’s Guide.” Example Science. March 5, 2024. https://www.example.org/volcanoes.
With no personal author, the note starts with the page title and the bibliography entry is listed under the owner or sponsor of the site. If the page has no publication or revision date, give an access date:
Example Health Agency. “Sleep and Study Performance.” Accessed October 4, 2026. https://www.example.org/sleep.
In Chicago’s author-date system the in-text citation is (Rivera 2024), and the year moves up to follow the author in the reference list. The Chicago citation quick guide shows both systems. The 17th and 18th editions format web pages the same way in these examples.
No author, no date, no title
| Missing | APA 7 | MLA 9 | Chicago |
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | Use the organization. If none, start with the title: Title of page. (Year, Month Day). Site Name. URL | Start with the “Title of Page.” | List under the site’s owner or sponsor. |
| Date | (n.d.) | Leave it out and add “Accessed Day Month Year.” | Add “Accessed Month Day, Year.” |
| Title | Describe the page in square brackets. | Give a plain description, without quotation marks. | Describe the page in your sentence. |
With no author in APA, the in-text citation uses the title, shortened if it is long: (How Volcanoes Form, 2024). Before you settle for “no author”, check the About page. A page with no author, no date and no named organization is also a weak source, and it is worth asking whether you should be relying on it.
Whole websites, news articles and PDFs
A whole website
If you only mention a site in general, APA does not want a reference entry. Name the site in your sentence and put the URL in parentheses: “Responses were collected with Example Survey (https://www.example.org).” MLA does cite a whole site, by its title in italics, followed by the publisher, date and URL.
A news article online
In APA, an article on a news site that has no print edition follows the web page format above, with the site name in plain text. An article from a newspaper or magazine that also publishes in print is cited as a periodical, with the publication name in italics instead of the article title. MLA and Chicago treat both the same way as other pages, with the publication as the container.
A PDF or report on a website
Cite what the document is, not how you found it. A report published by an organization is cited as a report, with the organization as author and the URL at the end. Do not cite it as a web page only because it opened in your browser.
A page you found through a search engine or an AI tool
Cite the page itself, never the search results. If an AI assistant pointed you to the page, open it and check that it says what you were told before you cite it. If you used the assistant’s own words, that is a different citation: see how to cite ChatGPT.
Generate the citation automatically
Formatting by hand is a good way to learn a style, but it is slow for a long reference list. The citation generator in the Plagiarism Checker Plus web app fills in the details from a URL, DOI or ISBN and formats the result in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 17, Harvard, IEEE and other styles. It is included with a free account.
- Open the citation generator and choose your style.
- Paste the page URL. Check the author, title and date it fills in against the page.
- Copy the reference into your list and use the matching in-text format from this guide.
Always read a generated citation before you hand it in. Web pages often hide the author or the date in places a tool cannot find, and organization names are not always written the way a style guide expects. For other source types, see the citation generator page and our guide to citing a YouTube video.