Citavi vs EndNote Comparison: Everything You Need to Know Before Choosing

Citavi is a reference management and knowledge organisation application, originally developed by Swiss Academic Software and now part of Lumivero, that supports researchers, students and academics throughout the research and writing process. Academic work involves collecting large volumes of literature, extracting relevant ideas and quotations, and then citing sources accurately in a chosen style, tasks that become unwieldy when handled across separate folders, notebooks and word processors. Citavi's approach is to combine reference management with note taking and task planning in one application, so that users can capture sources, annotate PDFs, organise their thoughts and move directly from ideas to structured writing. It is especially popular in German-speaking countries and is widely licensed by universities and research institutions across Europe. Key features include importing references from library catalogues, databases and DOIs or ISBNs, automatic retrieval of full-text PDFs where available, and a built-in PDF viewer for highlighting and extracting quotations and summaries linked to their sources. Knowledge organisation tools let users arrange quotations and ideas into categories and outlines that mirror the structure of a thesis or article. Citation features include a Microsoft Word add-in that inserts citations and generates bibliographies in thousands of citation styles, with support for LaTeX workflows as well. Task planning helps users manage reading lists and research milestones. Citavi offers both local projects and cloud projects, with Citavi Web providing browser-based access and collaboration for teams working on shared publications. Institutional licensing and administration options support deployment across universities and research organisations. The application serves students, doctoral candidates, academic researchers, research groups and knowledge workers in fields such as law, humanities, social sciences and medicine. Pricing starts from around USD 519, typically for a licence or subscription, and a free trial is available; there is no permanently free version.