How to Cite a Website in APA

In APA 7th edition, a webpage citation needs four things: who wrote it, when it was published, the page title, and the site name with the URL. Get those in the right order, with the right capitalisation, and the reference writes itself.

The APA website format

The template for a reference-list entry is:

Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of the webpage in sentence case. Site Name. https://www.example.com/page-address

Author: surname first, then initials, with a comma between them. If the author is an organisation, use its full name. If no author is named, the page title moves to the author position.
Date: give the most specific date the page shows — year, month and day if you have them. No date at all? Use (n.d.).
Title: sentence case — capitalise only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns. The title is italicised — APA italicises webpage titles in the reference list.
Site name: title case, not italic. Skip it when the site name is the same as the author — APA does not repeat it.
URL: give the full address, live if you can, and put no full stop after it — a trailing stop becomes part of the link when copied.

Worked examples

Webpage with an author and full date
Garcia, M. L. (2023, June 8). Five ways to revise more effectively. Study Skills Hub. https://www.studyskillshub.org/revision-tips

Organisation as author (site name omitted — it is the same)
City Public Library. (2024). Local history collections. https://www.citypubliclibrary.org/local-history

No named author
Understanding plagiarism and how to avoid it. (2025). Academic Integrity Office. https://www.academicintegrityoffice.edu/plagiarism-guide

In-text citations

Parenthetical: (Garcia, 2023). Narrative: Garcia (2023) suggests revising in short sessions. With no author, shorten the page title inside quotation marks: ("Understanding Plagiarism," 2025). For a direct quote, add the paragraph number when the page has no page numbers: (Garcia, 2023, para. 4).

Common mistakes

Writing “Retrieved from” before the URL — APA 7th dropped it for ordinary webpages.
Capitalising every word of the page title — webpage titles take sentence case.
Leaving the webpage title in plain text — APA italicises webpage titles in the reference list, so check yours is italic.
Adding a full stop after the URL, or breaking a long URL across lines by hand.
Repeating the site name when the author is that same organisation.

Generate it instead

Fill in the details once and copy the finished reference — formatted, with italics and hanging indent preserved.

Or open the full APA website citation generator.

Check your reference against your institution’s guidelines — lecturers sometimes vary the style.

Cite this page

Referencing this guide in your own work? Add it to your list exactly as a website source, formatted for you.