Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 14, 2026

CleanCitation is a free citation generator. You don't need an account, and we don't ask for your name or email.

Your citations stay in your browser.

The citations you create are saved in your browser's local storage on your device. They are not sent to us or stored on our servers. Clearing your browser data deletes them. Backup files and Word, BibTeX and RIS exports are created in your browser and saved straight to your device.

What we receive when you look up a source.

When you paste a link, DOI, ISBN or title, it is sent to our server so we can find the details of that source. To do that, our server may:

• fetch the web page at the link you entered, and
• ask public catalogs for the details: Crossref and doi.org (DOIs), Google Books and Open Library (books), and PubMed (medical articles). These services receive only the identifier or title being looked up, not anything about you.

We keep the details we find (such as title, author and date — never the page itself) in a temporary cache so the same source loads faster next time. Cached details are deleted after 1 to 90 days depending on the source type.

Our server logs record only the website's domain (for example, "nytimes.com"), whether the lookup worked, and which fields were found. They do not record the full link, your search terms or your IP address. Like most websites, our web server also keeps basic access logs (the time, the page requested and your browser type) to keep the site running. These logs do not include your IP address or what you looked up, and they are deleted within about a week.

Abuse protection.

To stop automated abuse, we count requests per IP address for up to one day. These counts are kept in memory only and are not linked to anything else.

Analytics.

We use a self-hosted copy of Umami to count page views and see which pages are used. Umami does not use cookies, does not collect personal information, and does not track you across other websites. We also count actions such as “citation copied” or “export downloaded”, without their content.

Cloudflare.

Our website is served through Cloudflare, which protects it from attacks and may process your IP address for that purpose. See Cloudflare's privacy policy: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/

Cookies.

CleanCitation does not set cookies.

Children.

CleanCitation is meant for high school and college students. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone.

Changes.

If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page.

Contact.

Questions about privacy: [email protected]