How to Cite a Website in BibTeX and BibLaTeX (2025 Update)

May 17, 2025

BibTeX is both a tool and file format widely used for managing citations and bibliographies in LaTeX documents. While citing journal articles and books is fairly straightforward, citing websites has always been more complicated—especially in classic BibTeX. That’s where BibLaTeX and tools like CiteDrive come in.

In this 2025 update, we’ll walk you through the correct format for citing websites using BibTeX and BibLaTeX, and show you how the CiteDrive Chrome Extension simplifies the entire process—from your browser to Overleaf, RStudio, and beyond.

Why Website Citations in BibTeX Can Be Tricky

BibTeX wasn’t originally built to handle dynamic or online sources. Citing a website usually requires using the generic @misc entry type, manually entering the title, URL, access date, and sometimes author data. This can lead to inconsistencies—especially across large projects.

To address these limitations, BibLaTeX was introduced. It adds support for dedicated entry types like @online, making web references more structured and standardized.

Introducing the CiteDrive Chrome Extension

NEW for 2025: The CiteDrive Chrome Extension makes website citation effortless.

Whether you’re citing academic papers, news articles, or blog posts, the CiteDrive extension allows you to:

Save citations from your browser in proper BibTeX or BibLaTeX format
Automatically capture metadata, including title, author, URL, and access date
Sync your references instantly with Overleaf, RStudio, or any linked project
Switch between BibTeX and BibLaTeX citation styles as needed
Organize citations in folders and export to .bib files in one click

This means no more manual formatting or broken citations. Just click and cite.

➡️ Install the CiteDrive Chrome Extension ➡️ Try CiteDrive Free

Demo:

How to Cite a Website in BibTeX

Here’s the traditional BibTeX format using @misc:

@misc{example2025,
  title = {Website Title},
  author = {Author Name},
  year = {2025},
  url = {https://example.com},
  note = {Accessed on May 17, 2025}
}

title: Page or article title
author: Author or organization (optional)
year: Year of publication (if known)
url: Full website link
note: Date you accessed the content

Using BibLaTeX for Website References

BibLaTeX is more web-friendly and supports the @online entry type:

@online{citedrive2025,
  title     = {Website Title},
  author    = {Author Name},
  year      = {2025},
  url       = {https://example.com},
  urldate   = {2025-05-17}
}

Use BibLaTeX if your document supports it—it requires less workaround and is more semantically accurate.

Adding In-Text Citations in LaTeX

To cite within your LaTeX document:

\cite{citedrive2025}

This will generate an in-text reference like: [CiteDrive2025], depending on your bibliography style.

Generating the Bibliography

At the end of your document, include:

\bibliography{references}

This pulls in all references from your references.bib file (no file extension needed).

Conclusion

Citing websites in LaTeX doesn’t have to be frustrating. Whether you’re using BibTeX or BibLaTeX, you can now automate the process with tools like CiteDrive and its Chrome Extension.

Start capturing accurate website citations, organize them by project, and sync them directly to Overleaf or your LaTeX workflow—with zero copy-paste hassle.

👉 Install the CiteDrive Chrome Extension 👉 Visit citedrive.com to learn more