References used to be the bitter end. Now they're dessert.

Citrello is a free reference manager for Claude, ChatGPT, Word and Overleaf. Your library stays on your computer, and every citation stays live and checked.

Download for Windows Free and open source

References, the sweet part.

You, to Claude

  1. Searched your Thesis project: 23 references
  2. Checked them on Crossref: 1 retracted, left out
  3. Wrote Introduction.docx with 18 live citations
Introduction.docx
Elsevier Harvard · bibliography included
Works with
  • Claude
  • ChatGPT
  • Codex
  • Microsoft Word
  • Overleaf and LaTeX
  • Mendeley
  • Zotero

AI makes up references.

Ask a chatbot for sources and some of them don't exist. The DOI leads nowhere, or the paper says something else. You find out when a reviewer does.

With Citrello, Claude and ChatGPT search your own library and cite only papers in it. A new paper is looked up on Crossref before it's added. The library is the same in every chat.

Doesn't existMiller, R. (2021). Offshore turbine end-of-life costs. J. Wind Eng. 14, 220–231.
Verified on CrossrefTopham, E., McMillan, D., 2017. Sustainable decommissioning of an offshore wind farm. Renew. Energy 102, 470–480.

Only the second one can come from Citrello.

A new journal means redoing every reference.

Rejected from one journal, off to the next: new citation style, new order, new numbers. A whole afternoon of retyping, and one mistake is enough.

With Citrello, citations in Word are live. Pick any of 10,000 journal styles and click Update: every citation and the bibliography change at once, as one Undo step.

References

Retracted papers and wrong DOIs slip in.

Papers get retracted after you cite them. DOIs get mistyped. Nobody checks the 60th reference until it's too late.

With Citrello, every reference gets a rating: verified check or problem. Retractions, DOIs that don't exist, and authors that don't match are flagged. Check a whole library in one click.

verifiedTopham & McMillan (2017) Sustainable decommissioning…
problemSmith (2019) Offshore wind economics…Retracted in 2023
problemLee (2020) Blade recycling…This DOI doesn't exist
checkØrsted (2025) Our offshore wind farmsWeb page, no DOI

Drafts with typed citations can't be fixed.

A co-author typed [1], [2–5] and (Smith et al., 2020) by hand, with a typed reference list at the end. Change anything and the numbering falls apart.

With Citrello, drop the Word file in. Every reference is looked up and added to your library, and the typed citations become live ones. Mendeley's Word plugin can take them over too.

Costs are often underestimated [3] and rarely published [4–6].

Costs are often underestimated (Topham and McMillan, 2017) and rarely published (Bilgili and Alphan, 2022; Vetters et al., 2024).

Collecting papers is tedious.

Copy the title, search for it, download a citation file, import it, fix the details. For every paper.

With Citrello, click Add to Citrello in your bookmarks bar on any paper's page, even behind your university login. Select a reference on the page to add that one instead. Or paste a link or a DOI.

sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148116308953
＋ Add to CitrelloInboxOverleaf
Added: Topham2017, verified on Crossref

Messy .bib files and broken \cite keys.

BibTeX copied from search engines, lowercased acronyms, the same paper under two keys, and a key that suddenly isn't in the .bib anymore.

With Citrello, keys never change. Exports protect acronyms and escape special characters. Check an Overleaf project for missing, unused and duplicate entries, convert a hand-typed bibliography, and keep a .bib file up to date automatically.

% written by Citrello
@article{Topham2017,
  author = {Topham, Eva and McMillan, David},
  title  = {Sustainable decommissioning of an
            offshore wind farm},
  journal = {Renewable Energy},
  year   = {2017},
  pages  = {470--480},
  doi    = {10.1016/j.renene.2016.10.066}
}
% and in a title: {LiDAR}, {CO2}, {NOx}

Your references are locked in one app.

Your library lives inside one company's software. Moving means losing details, and the free plan always ends somewhere.

With Citrello, import and export Mendeley, Zotero, EndNote, RIS, BibTeX and CSL-JSON whenever you like. It's free and open source, and the library is a file on your computer.

MendeleyCitrelloZotero

Your library stays on your computer.

Citrello goes online only to look up references, download citation styles, and pass requests from ChatGPT or Claude on the web to the app on your computer. There are no ads and no tracking. An account is optional, and only needed for the web connectors.

Read the privacy policy

Get started in three steps.

  1. Download Citrello

    For Windows. Start Citrello.exe; your library opens in the browser.

  2. Connect your AI

    One click for Claude Desktop and Codex. For ChatGPT and Claude on the web, sign in and add the connector.

  3. Add the Word tab

    Settings → Word adds Insert citation, Update and Citation style to Word.

Download for Windows

Windows may say "Windows protected your PC" for new apps: click More info → Run anyway. A Mac version is planned.

Questions

Is it really free?

Yes. Citrello is open source under the AGPL licence. There's no paid plan.

Can I keep using Mendeley or Zotero?

Yes. Import your library from either and export back at any time. Citations in Word use Mendeley's format, so Mendeley Cite can take a document over.

Which AI apps work with it?

Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Codex connect directly. ChatGPT and Claude on the web and phone connect through Citrello's secure bridge while the app is running.

Does it work with Overleaf?

Yes. Export clean BibTeX or biblatex, check an Overleaf project .zip, convert hand-typed bibliographies, and keep a .bib file up to date.

What about Mac?

The app and the Word tab are Windows-only for now. A Mac version is planned.