# Zotero Reviews **Vendor:** Digital Scholar **Category:** [Reference Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/reference-management) **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 99 ## About Zotero Zotero is a free, open-source research tool designed to help users collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research materials. It integrates seamlessly with web browsers, allowing for the automatic extraction and storage of bibliographic information from books, articles, and other resources encountered online. Zotero supports multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android, ensuring accessibility across various devices. Its user-friendly interface enables efficient management of research data, making it an invaluable asset for students, academics, and professionals. Key Features and Functionality: - Automatic Data Collection: Zotero detects research materials as users browse the web and can automatically save complete bibliographic references and associated files. - Organizational Tools: Users can sort items into collections, tag them with keywords, and create saved searches that dynamically update with relevant materials. - Citation and Bibliography Generation: Zotero integrates with word processors like Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs, enabling the creation of in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliographies in over 9,000 citation styles. - Annotation Capabilities: The built-in PDF reader allows for highlighting, note-taking, and freehand annotations, with support for Apple Pencil on compatible devices. - Synchronization Across Devices: Zotero can sync data across multiple devices, ensuring that files, notes, and bibliographic records are consistently up to date. - Collaborative Features: Users can create group libraries to co-write papers, distribute course materials, or build collaborative bibliographies, facilitating seamless teamwork. Primary Value and User Solutions: Zotero addresses the challenges of managing extensive research materials by providing a centralized platform for collecting, organizing, and citing sources. Its integration with web browsers and word processors streamlines the research workflow, reducing the time and effort required to compile and format bibliographies. The synchronization feature ensures that users have access to their research data across all devices, promoting flexibility and continuity. Additionally, Zotero's collaborative tools support teamwork among researchers, enhancing productivity and knowledge sharing. By offering these comprehensive features at no cost, Zotero democratizes access to powerful research management tools, benefiting a wide range of users from students to seasoned academics. ## Zotero Reviews ### 1. Transforms Reading and Reference Management for Researchers **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Márcio F. | Postdoctoral Researcher, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 13, 2026 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero has made reading scientific papers on my computer much more enjoyable. I really appreciate being able to highlight both text and figures, and then export my annotations. Sharing these notes is also very important to me. In addition to these features, Zotero serves as an excellent reference manager, allowing me to easily add citations to my manuscripts. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I do not like the limited number of colors I can add in labels. Labelling is a important step of my organization system and I would love to be able to add more colors to it because I can more easily find and classify what I need from those colors **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero allows me to read and highlight scientific papers, and also serves as my reference manager for adding citations to my own scientific manuscripts. It has become an essential tool in my academic career. ### 2. Excellent Citation and Annotation Tools **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Felicity R. | Graduate Student/Teacher/Team Lead, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 09, 2025 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Citation generation and annotation tools **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Outdated interface, not always intuitive **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Reference management and note organization - Zotero helps me categorize research articles and annotations by topic, date, author, and more. ### 3. Does the job **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 06, 2025 **What do you like best about Zotero?** What I like the most about Zotero is that it is simple and if you remember to open the app before using the plugin, works without a hitch. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** The time it takes to update or to open the citation window seems a bit too long. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helps me manage my references. ### 4. Using Zotero for PhD **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 01, 2024 **What do you like best about Zotero?** The reference management system is perfect, bar none. The sync capabilty across ALL devices is my absolute favourite thing! I use my laptop for searches, switch to ipad for reading and notetaking, and back again to my laptop to use Overleaf to write my stuff. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** The switch from Mendeley to Zotero was a bit frustrating at the beginning - till I found out an easy way to do that! Honestly, the only thing I dislike is the "look" but that's superficial and overall it's been great for me to use. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a graduate student, conducting literature reviews and using online sources is common pratice. The plugins and cross-device functionality has made it super easy. Plus - the zotero + notion plugin is super super helpful! ### 5. Great at keeping me organized! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Health, Wellness and Fitness | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 16, 2024 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I love the Chrome browser add-on. That makes it very easy to save articles I'm researching for and save them to the correct folder. I use it regularly to sort research and analyze research articles. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Nothing about the platform aside from the interface is a little outdated. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps me to keep all of my references organized and share references with other users. ### 6. This is very useful software for writers or any Ph.D. candidate. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Afsar K. | Educator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 24, 2023 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I am a scholar of literature, and Zotero helps me in many ways in my writing. such as reference management, automatic citation and bibliography generation, tagging and categorization, advanced searching, and many other features that are yet to be discovered. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I think it should have a writing section too that includes some important writing services such as grammar checkers, paraphrasing, plagiarism checkers, and translation. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero helps me to read lots of study material, like research papers and thesis, and I can track all my reading by referencing. I can also categorize my study material into limitless sections and sub-sections. It can generate citations in any format you like that you can download for your writing. Its beneficial nature does not stop here; there are also a lot of things to do with this software. ### 7. Great citation manager/organizing my papers **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sukran Bahar S. | Graduate Student, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 08, 2023 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I am a PhD student so I often write papers where I need to manage my citations, but I also use Zotero so I can sync my readings across devices (my desktop computer on campus vs my personal laptop). I love that I can integrate Zotero with Word and Google Docs and that I can take notes on Zotero, organize by tags, make different libraries and also search text. It has been a tremendous help in graduate school! **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I don't really have any downsides of using Zotero. Sometimes the integration with Word can be wonky and it can be a little difficult to edit citations when writing the paper but I think that is expected with basically any citation manager **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use it to reference other papers, I can quickly download citations from sources to use them in papers I write. But I also use it to organize my papers by using different tags and libraries so I can access both the papers and my notes easily in the future when I am trying to refer back to what I have read on a particular topic. Being able to integrate with Notion has helped me a lot with keeping track of my readings as well ### 8. It's great help for writing research paper especially review of literature **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vandana K. | Associate professor , Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 26, 2022 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero is very much helpful for me it organize my research content or manuscript . I can sort my searches or reviewed article into collections and tag them with keywords also create saved searches that automatically fill with relevant materials as i proceed with work. We can work collaboratively with co writer mabers with same application. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Its open source also free software so there is nothing as such I dislike but yes I need to be trained myself to use it effectively **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** It's very useful for researcher **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** colllabratively write a paper with a sgare course materials as well Zotero library with students and colleagues, at no cost.Zotero can optionally synchronize data across devices, keeping my files, notes, and bibliographic records up to date ### 9. A Must for Long Term Research Projects **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Syrus J. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 24, 2023 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero really solves a few major issues that I'd otherwise have. It makes it easy to save research progress or sources, it makes it extremely easy to organize sources, and it enables me to keep track of sources and potential leads across devices thanks to its syncing. Its browser extension works extremely well. I really wouldn't be able to manage a multiyear research project without it. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Zotero has an issue with syncing where it sometimes syncs while I'm in the middle of updating an entry title, meaning that it erases whatever I just wrote. This has been going on for months but it's difficult to replicate, meaning that I've had to just deal with it. Additionally, free users are limited in storage, and won't really be able to use it as more than just a bibliography manager. Its premium version is inexpensive, however. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero solves the issue of trying to save resources easily. By using a browser extension, Zotero also saves enough extra information about a source that I can usually track it down even if the URL or link gets broken. That's a problem otherwise, because when it's laborious for me to save information and write down a bibliographic entry, I might initially just save the URL (obviously a problem because URLs break all the time). It helps me navigate my resources more easily through tags, too. ### 10. Managing references has never been easier! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jorge C. | Graduate Research Assistant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 07, 2023 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I love so many things about Zotero! I love that it is free, to begin with. But regardless of being an open access resource it is very easy to use and highly functional. The browser add-on makes it very easy for me to add any kind of source to my library and almost all of the time Zotero will find the pdf file for me as well as all of the documents metadata. I also like its Word add on, which makes it very easy for me to create a reference list while working on a new project. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I'd love to see two things improve in future versions of Zotero. First, I would love to see in a document's info section what folder or folder are they in. Second, I'd love if Zotero files could be stored in the cloud instead of in a folder in my computer because that makes that some of my files get duplicated. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Keeping my references organized by topic, project, class, etc. I use the iPad app so I can keep all of my sources synchronized. On the iPad I can highlight documents and take notes. On my desktop I keep my files in order and use Zotero to manage my references for projects. ### 11. Zotero: an ideal free reference manager **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** CRISTIAN EDUARDO B. | Profesor auxiliar, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 23, 2022 **What do you like best about Zotero?** First of all, it is free. Behind this tool is an excellent and attentive development and support team. This tool offers a simple interface, ideal for distraction-free work, especially for academics. On the other hand, it offers a plugin for browsers to quickly capture the metadata of materials to be referenced, as well as an integration process between versions. Finally, the integration with Word makes it easy to cite and reference authors without needing to switch between applications. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Perhaps the graphical interface could be updated to a better visual proposal to adapt to a more minimalist view or according to the operating systems. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** The best part is that it allows me the organization and management of the bibliographic material for my research projects. ### 12. When it comes to the best supporting award in my academic success, Zotero wins it always. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ghulam Mehdi D. | Research Assistant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2022 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero is a life-saver for academic writers. It is free and easy to use with loads of built-in citation styles integrate smoothly with my browsers. The best part is that it handles the PDF files in a way that suits best every academic writer. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** The issue however remains that Zotero hasn't fixed for so long and that is occasionally broken citations that irritate me. Sometimes it gets stuck and these days whenever I open it I get an "update" dialogue, no matter how many times I open, Its there. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am a full-time academic writer that requires me to stay updated with the literature and its organization in terms of references. Zotero has enabled me to focus on the writing part and it takes care of the references part of my articles. It does a perfect job, especially when integrated with Google Chrome. ### 13. Good but overpriced **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Thomas C. A. | Math and Physics Tutor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 26, 2023 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Linux app works beautifully, design is simple, and functionality is great. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Free version only comes with 300MB of storage, paid version is overpriced. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Organizing my references ### 14. Excellent choice for bibliography management **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vladislav I. | MSCA fellow, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 13, 2022 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Free software with all needed feature. Due to community support, it is easy to get answers to questions and even ask for new features. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Any complain about Zotero can be rephrased into – fix it yourself. Some do not like particular features – they can write a plugin or a style. Others do not like size and price limits – they can setup an unlimited server through webdav or just store Zotero files in Dropbox. In a way, Zotero is limitless. That means everything in Zotero can be patched or extended. Even if you do not have skills for that – there is a community of users ready to help. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Bibliography management for scientific writing. ### 15. Zotero; A one mark solution to manage heaps of literatures **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alina A. | Technical Assistant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 01, 2022 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero is a life saver for academic writers. With multiple integration plugs in, Zotero is an excellent open-source citation software. The best feature is integration with all the common web browsers. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** There are a few issues with zotero that I faced, especially the integration with the libre office, that is unreliable. In addition, i faced broken embedded citation, while working on some word processors like Google Docs. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Being an academic writer zoter helps me to manage my references that i can update from time to time without any hassles. Furthermore, thanks to the availability of all the citation styles which saved me from doing citations manually. ### 16. Very useful referencing software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 24, 2022 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero is one of most useful referencing sofwares for reserchers. It is simple to use, easy navigation and several referencing styles are available. It is compatible with major browsers like Chrome, Edge and Firefox and also with different word processing softwares **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Adding a new reference style is not easy. Requires navigation. The interface of choosing a new style from the list could be made more user friendly. The free version has a limit. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a researcher, I write several scientific articles and papers and Zotero helps me manage my references. It saves a lot of time and reduces referencing errors. ### 17. Not completely compatible with APA **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bridget L. | Induction Coach, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 01, 2022 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Well obviously, it's a lot easier to use an app like Zotero than it is to manually format my bibliography. I also like that I can automatically export document data to Zotero which is something I couldn't do with apps I'd used before. I imagine some of them might have developed in that direction since...It's also easy to move document data from one folder to another so I can reuse citations and keep track of documents I've read. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I dislike that I have to edit every bibliography entry to completely conform with APA format. APA requires titles to be written in sentence case. Zotero formats them in title case. I have to go through my multi-page bibliographies and change capital letters to lower case. This may be due to the quality of the data Zotero extracts from sources, but there is no conformity of certain elements, such as editions. For example, I see the edition of a book written as (1 edition), (1st edition) and first edition. Also, Zotero doesn't seem to be able to find the authors of many articles I find on web pages. Most often I have to find the author and input it myself. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Again, having an app like Zotero is a definite timesaver and I appreciate that it's free. However, the APA conformity issue makes me want to find another app. ### 18. Straight out of the 90s but has been great for gathering and citing sources **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 12, 2022 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Once you have it installed, it is a fantastic aggregator of sources for any scholarly/academic project you're working on. Really cannot imagine working without this - it's amazing to be able to just click a button within the web browser (in my case Firefox) and have it added to the given project I need to attributed to. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** It's pretty ugly/clunky UI/UX overall and clearly has not had any facelift since whatever year it was originally designed. This alone was very off-putting when first trying to learn how to use it but ever since it's just something I have gotten used to. Also it's pretty hard to just be able to export citations one-by-one if you want to pull a source citation for adding to something you already have. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Definitely worth the little amount of time required to learn how to use the program. It's a great asset to have but is just a little clunky **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** -Tracking all sources used -Organizing/aggregating all sources used -Automatic citations in whichever format needed (ie Chicago APA MLA etc) -Simple pull/print/export of all sources for use in Word, InDesign, whatever ### 19. Best App for organizing literature **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 11, 2022 **What do you like best about Zotero?** 1. add literature to collections in many ways 2. keep track of the pdf file in the local PC 3. great integration with Notion (taking notes) 4. have useful extension like zotfile/zutilio **What do you dislike about Zotero?** 1. Can't choose a folder to save all the literature pdf files (zotfile is good but when you change a computer and your path change, everything should be reset) 2.Can't generate link that could used in Notion which directly lead to the item in local zotero **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Can choose to open file using Zotero ### 20. Easy-to-use Reference Manager for research writing **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** James K. | Research Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** One thing I love about Zotero is that it's add-ons work seamlessly with all word processing solutions I use for my work, ie., Google Docs, and Microsoft Word. I am able to add new articles to my library with just a click, using the add-ons for browsers. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** One thing I dislike about Zotero is the lack of timely support from the providers. Sometimes, it is difficult to find an answer that works when I visit the community forum. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Research writing is a daunting task, particularly if you have to review and work with a ton of sources. This is why I like Zotero Reference Manager. It makes citations easier to generate and is a time saver. ### 21. Zotero reliable and consistent system for bibliography, citations and reading **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Biotechnology | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 14, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero synchronizes between the desktop app and the google chrome (and possibly other browser) plug-ins. A document open in chrome can be automatically added to a bibliography via the plug-in; this document can be added as a full text or a pdf to the Zotero app, sorted into a bibliography for future use (as citations or for reading). **What do you dislike about Zotero?** The plug-in sometimes disconnects from the app; papers therefore may not be successfully added to the app. The user interface of the Zotero app itself is also sometimes unclear. Synchronizing to google docs as a bibliography is unreliable. Making shared Zotero bibliographies is not straightforward. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero allows tracking of papers and works encountered online to be added to different "projects" sorted by topic within the Zotero app. These can then be exported to another platform for use as a bibliography. The papers can be referred back to and context added to each "project." ### 22. Excellent, and you can freely reccomend to others **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hannah J. | Student, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 12, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero is really easy to use. It's a dream. All your citations are logged in an organized file system with compies of the source!! And my favorite part is you don't have to hold back in reccomending it to others since it's free and open source. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I don't really see any downsides. I do wish it had a friendly invitation link to share with others. In other words, I wish Zotero received more hype. I have worked as a consultant for college students. I find it a bit awkward when they ask for citation help and really I just use Zotero instead of doing it myself. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** For my purposes, Zotero tends to be the best choice because I can freely recommend it to my clients. I can then give them tutorials on how to use the resource, thereby improving outcomes and satisfaction. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero saves you from the tedium of citations, sure. But it also saves the metadata of your source so that you can export in any style AND use zotero to access the source later. Zotero also has awesome collaboration features where you can save sources to a mutual file. ### 23. Makes research and document gathering SO much easier! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Cheryl B. | Theatre Arts Instructor, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 24, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I love the easy desktop download and web access, allowing me to access my research articles from wherever I am working. I also really like the chrome extension, which adds the document to my library with a simple button click! Zotero has made my research and work for my doctoral dissertation SO much more manageable. Instead of keeping track of my own folders and tracking, I can click a button using chrome when I find a piece of research I want to use and it stores all available information within Zotero which you can later sync across devices. You can also create direct citation and bibliography pages from using this product. There is also an option to connect Zotero to word, allowing you to cite your sources in real time while writing. It really takes the guess work out of research, and the constant back and forth when trying to cite sources. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Unlike other software I know of, you cannot make notes directly on pdf or documents you have saved to your Zotero account if viewing through an iPad and using a stylus. However, you can type physical notes that are saved and synced across all platforms. It also isn't as visually appealing as RefWorks, which I was using prior, however Zotero is free! **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** It is free, so why not give it a shot? It does so much work for you, streamlines so many processes, and if your computer crashes, you still have access to your research material via the web. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero has made my research and work for my doctoral dissertation SO much more manageable. Instead of keeping track of my own folders and tracking, I can click a button using chrome when I find a piece of research I want to use and it stores all available information within Zotero which you can later sync across devices. You can also create direct citation and bibliography pages from using this product. There is also an option to connect Zotero to word, allowing you to cite your sources in real-time while writing. It really takes the guesswork out of research and the constant back and forth when trying to cite sources. ### 24. Awesome Program **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Deanna T. | D, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 03, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero keeps all of my research in one place where I can quickly and easily refer back to it and find the original place the research came from. Truly awesome program. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** There is nothing to dislike about Zotero. It is an amazing product that has been very beneficial! **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** This is the best program I have seen to help keep research in one place where it is easily retrieved. I love Zotero. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero has plenty of benefits, including clickable links to original sources, a button to push to cite works, the ability to cite in various formats, and organization all around. ### 25. Zotero is the BEST citation manager **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrew H. | Education Specialist, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero is stable and reliable. I do not need to be online to use the desktop application and it syncs seamlessly with the cloud. Because it is open-source, I can install plugins that further personalize the experience. I use ZotFile to sync my pdfs, which I link to the citations, with my OneDrive cloud server. This allows me to fully sync all of my files without having to pay for a subscription. Furthermore, in my 5+ years using Zotero, I have never had it crash or cause issues that other citation managers have caused. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** There is very little not to like. My biggest wish is that there was a native mobile application. Instead, I create a Safari link on my iOS homepage. Still, a stand-alone application would be nice. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing my literature search citations, and including the digital file with the citation is easy with Zotero. The browser extension also automatically retrieves citation information and files with great accuracy. ### 26. Zotero - the fastest way to organize your bibliography **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Maciej N. | Laravel PHP Backend Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 16, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I like the simplicity of usage. I only add pdf or books to it, and then I can add referrals to it in my documents and articles. It has many documents types and many bibliography styles. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Sometimes it cant read correct data about files. This can be improved, but we can always add important information by hand. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Start using it now. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** With this software, I organize my files. I don't need to check information about it on the internet because I always have it in my database. Finnaly I can add a bibliography to my documents without effort. ### 27. Zotero review **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Great for citation management, fairly intuitive **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Sorting is not intuitive, file nesting and subfolders are duplicated instead of one instance being tagged in different folders **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Good for managing citations and keep track of literature ### 28. Powerful but clunky at times **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 25, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Web browser-enabled functionality to add sources to my existing reference library. Also the ability to sync via cloud (when it works - see below). Relatively simple and easy to use interface. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Inability to annotate saved PDFs (like you can in Mendeley) and very restrictive storage amount in the free version (upgraded for minimal cost but compared to Mendeley, the Zotero free version provides much less functionality). Also, the cloud sync function does not seem to work all the time, especially in my institution, which may be related to the security settings but it is still frustrating. Sometimes, the PDF does not save when i use the browser Zotero add-on but it is hard to predict. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy cataloging of research reference materials that I could easily share to others, such as collaborators. ### 29. An easy and pleasant software **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** ALEXANDRU I. S. | Student, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 13, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** What I like most is the ease with which you can work with this program and the final bibliographic result **What do you dislike about Zotero?** However, compared to EndNote, Zotero is not as professional. I don't like the fact that certain data has to be entered manually many times **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** For the bibliography of certain articles and studies for the university ### 30. Manage references **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brianda Daniela G. | G, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 04, 2022 **What do you like best about Zotero?** The accuracy of the different reference styles is great. Not a lot of mistakes that you need to fix later on. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Maybe the word interface is not the best, Zotero bip helps a lot **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Try to use alongside the word plugin the online version Zotero bip, just to confirm **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am writing my research papers faster because I have s great reference manager ### 31. Wish I’d known of it earlier! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Patrick H. | Editor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 10, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** The ability to embed this in a browser and quickly add a citation or bibliography entry when looking at an article online is super useful and saves a lot of time. You still need to double-check all the data is being entered correctly for your given citation guidelines, but it's still better than entering it all by hand. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** There's very little about the program itself that I dislike—it has a basic function and it accomplishes it well. The only frustration is that sometimes the browser extension doesn't like to keep you logged in to the program which can be a bit of a pain when you need to make sure you're logged in again and synced with the actual software. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** It's easy to install, easy to use, and efficiently works to help you maintain all your citations and bibliography. It knows what it sets out to solve and does it! **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I've found Zotero to be incredibly useful with pretty much any kind of academic or nonfiction writing where I'm citing sources. Essays, articles, even reviews are improved with Zotero. ### 32. Great Tool to Manage Any References **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Scruffs O. | COPE Instructor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 02, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero allows for fast and easy compiling, organizing, and exporting any needed or used references for a project.The program allows for users to keep seperate collections of references, ensuring the quick ability to keep on top of your sources. Their search and tag functions make it even easier to redefine or sub-define sources, allowing for the location of sources to be swift. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Unfortunately, Zotero can be challenging to navigate due to its compact design and clustered interface. It can also be difficult to remove attachments within the application (this is a problem in terms of available space on the cloud storage). One fast way to conteract this problem is to delete all files, but that can introduce problems on its own. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** I definitely would recommend using Zotero; it takes all of the pain out of writing, organizing, and exporting the citations needed for any project. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** The main problems we solve with Zotero include organizing and categorizing the references for our website, articles, and essays. Being able to keep all citations and sources in one location, such as Zotero, is a real time saver, and allows for that precious time to be focussed elsewhere. ### 33. A good solution for references but not easy to use and adapt to your needs **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 13, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I like that Zotero will integrate with your browser and with your MS Word or Open Office Word documents automatically to help with organizing your references. When every I use Zotero, I feel like it reduces the time I use for reference so I can concentrate on doing the real work on a paper or document. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I think Zotero can make their interface more efficient by changing the way they present their features. Also every time you want to change the style of your references on a document or more it feels like it ruins everything else. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero solves the problem to manage and organize references. And the best thing is that it works with different document processors. So if I work on a file using MS Word and someone is using OpenOffice to continue working on this same file on his own computer, Zotero will work fine in both. And the integration with the browsers will even help with this. ### 34. User-friendly interface **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Zoe A. | Human Research Technologist 1 at Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 05, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** It's pretty easy to figure out the program. Useful for researchers to share articles and papers written by others for citation purposes. Very nice organizing features **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Not always the easiest to move libraries across different devices. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Make sure you share admin rights with everyone on your team. You can always customize how much control someone has, but it makes things easier **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Citations have become much easier to create. Nice program to use for research papers when you have a whole team of people collecting information within one library. ### 35. Must have for researchers **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 13, 2022 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Easy to keep track of the papers and annotations. Extracting it for later use **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Sentences across two pages are split and it adds citation to both parts. Makes it cumbursome to edit. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Organising literature, bibliography, notes, tags ### 36. Organization of citations **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Grzegorz N. | geolog, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Easily manage your citations from your text editor **What do you dislike about Zotero?** No continuation of browser version, only PC version available **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I can manage literature. Citing publications is very easy. ### 37. Really good for organization of sources and collaboration. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 27, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero automatically formats and cites all your sources for any of your projects! This is an extremely useful feature. In addition, Zotero has both a website version and an app version for the platform. Also, the Zotero extension lets you import your sources into other documents, which is extremely handy. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** The website version of Zotero is a little bit difficult to use. However, if you use the app version, Zotero works great. It is also a bit difficult to learn how to use all of Zotero's features. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** I definitely recommend using the application version of Zotero rather than the website version. I would also recommend synching Zotero accounts so that sources you find on the web can automatically be added to Zotero with ease. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero has many benefits, especially making sure no plagiarism occurs in any projects or papers. In addition, Zotero is a collaborative platform and allows you to see sources other people in your team have added and annotated, which is great. ### 38. Zotero Review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andreas G. | Graduate Research Assistant, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2021 ### 39. Perfect tool for people in academic research **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gaurav S. | I, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 20, 2020 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero Extension in the web browser. I love the feature of saving the paper while reading on the web. It also provides various tags and labels which is easy to find. It is a must to have tool for the academic community of students and professors. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** They can provide more features into the UI like drag and drop of paper and changing their order in the board. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Great tool for the academic community. Please use the web browser extension for sure. It provides a very easy way to save multiple works we can do on research papers. Also since it does not require a subscription for basic features, it is good for students. They can use the tool to organize their research and organize the tasks to be completed as well. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am using it to collate my research papers in one place. I use it to make a list of relevant papers for my research. I also use it to make notes on different papers. It provides notes tagging facility to various labels and tags created manually. ### 40. Great product that was a lifesaver for my college thesis **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Publishing | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 14, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Ease of inputting citations and changing the type of citation (eg from MLA to Chicago Style) **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I certainly wouldn't describe it as a sleek interface **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Citations are incredibly time-consuming. I've used EastBib, but the experience is lackluster. The benefits are enormous time savings. Zotero cuts the time it takes to do citations from an hour to 15 minutes. ### 41. Excellent tool for note and citation management, bibliography tracking **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Abby S. | Principal Consultant, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2020 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Everything is keyword searchable. I can type notes and search for specific terms. This is really useful for primary sources - I just drop a few relevant keyword into the note attached to the source and I can easily access it later. This is like the old notecard system brought into the 21st century. I love it! This is especially useful when I go back to something after a long time or if I have more than one project going at once. I can easily review all the relevant sources by keyword search and go from there. I also like that you can specify where you want to search (everywhere, titles, etc) which is really helpful when you know one word of a title but can't remember anything else. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** It it sometimes really time consuming to create a bibliography out of selected sources from one list. I have not been able to figure out a streamlined way to do this. There are also a lot of errors in the created bibliography that I have to go through and check, but I suppose that is still faster than typing them out manually. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** It is worth it to pay for the in-application storage, otherwise you will spend tons of time re-linking your files to the records. It's especially useful if you know your project will be long term (over several years) and you are likely to change computers or servers in that time. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Citation management, source organization, tracking historiography. It allows me to keep my research notes together with my citations, which has really improved my ability to use all the sources I review. Previously, I used a Word document with my notes and a separate bibliography tool like Evernote or One note (can't remember the exact name) and I would have to search through my computer file system to find my notes related to a specific source. I also really like that it will automatically add a PDF or screenshot of the file if it can - that saves a lot of time. This also allows me to easily separate bibliographies for unique projects, courses, and even assignments. Most of the organizational features of Zotero are really intuitive and work specifically for what I am using. ### 42. Great library organizer **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aurore D. | Teacher and researcher, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 25, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I like best the possibility to share a library **What do you dislike about Zotero?** It feels not easy to organize papers, and sometimes, when you delete from a file, it deletes it from the complete library. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I organized and wrote my thesis thanks to Zotero ### 43. Very intuitive tool. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dulcea H. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 08, 2020 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero is an outstanding all-inclusive testing program. You can organize all search content in one location and handle your data set easily. I like to add the zotero to your file and browser to organize articles. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** The user interface can be improved with additional user-friendly features which will make work more exciting. The program will incorporate etiquette to attract more scientists and similar features. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Zotero is free software that allows you to track and manage your parameters at all times. I suggest this while doing a study. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** In any event I need them in order to solve the question of my references Zotero has to type. Now, when I need it, I can save and recall my Zotero referrals. ### 44. Just an average person using a citation manager **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nancy W. | TD Coordinator for Library Accessibility Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 10, 2021 **What do you like best about Zotero?** the browser integration and that is all I have to write **What do you dislike about Zotero?** that I am not able to create folders I really don't like the fact that I have to type a certain number of characters **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Nothing that I couldn't with other programs ### 45. Easy-to-use citation management tool! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 03, 2020 **What do you like best about Zotero?** 1. Folder organization capability based on project or group 2. Has a chrome plugin that makes is very easy to instantly save manuscripts or papers to the correct location with the click of a button 3. Integrates and works flawlessly with Microsoft Word and Google Docs 4. Easy to create collaborations by inviting team members to join a group 5. Seamlessly saves references, creates in-text citations in the proper format, and automatically generates bibliographies **What do you dislike about Zotero?** 1. Sending invitations to collaborators is limited to the Zotero webpage; it would be nice is this functionality was built into the desktop app **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Saving time adding in citations and building bibliographies, ultimately allowing for more material to be reviewed and included in pending manuscript drafts. Takes a significant burden off of the authors in worrying about giving due credit to prior published research; it's all done for you with the click of a button! ### 46. Manage your references: easy peasy **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 08, 2020 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I love Zotero. The software has several advantages: First, it is very easy to use. Second, it is open-source and free (as in free beer) so you don't have to worry about licensing issues. Third, it is lightweight, so it will not slow your computer down. Fourth, It can be integrated with other tools such as Jupyter. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I used Zotero for my PhD research and I had no problem with that. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing references for my research papers and thesis. At the organisational level, it allows us to share references and facilitate communication. ### 47. Easy to use and implement software. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Terry J. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 11, 2020 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero is an excellent research application for everybody. It lets you coordinate all research material in one place and allows you to easily manage your data set. In order to organize papers I love the zotero add on your file and browser. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** By adding more user-friendly features that make work more exciting, the user interface can be improved. The system can add labels to attract more researchers and other similar features. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Zotero is free software, which lets you at all times control and monitor your benchmarks. When conducting a research, I recommend it. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** In any case I need them for my research, Zotero helps solve the problem of having to type my references. Now I can save my Zotero referrals and recall them whenever I need them. ### 48. Great tool to manage bibliography **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 15, 2020 **What do you like best about Zotero?** As being a research assistant, I quite often occupy myself with a literature research. Zotero allows to manage all sources together with corresponding pdf and provides consistency to my work. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Maybe, that it does not accept endnote format for import. However, it is not a big problem. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero is helping to organize my work - in the software, I am fold creating collections and subcollections - by destabilization it is becoming easier to find an article that you need. Regarding the benefits, it allows to sort all articles by the date of adding it to Zotero - for me it was helpful ### 49. Perfect sophisticated solution for citations **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eugen P. | LMS specialist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 09, 2020 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero was helpful to collect all citations together, merge dublicates and then insert reference and bibliography in Word **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Zotero offers not really modern website design, but the Help section is brilliant! **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** The main benefit - smooth integration with Word. I just insert a citation and the bibliography list is immediately updates. Unbelievable! ### 50. The best instrument for organizing your bibliography **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ana Carolina M. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 07, 2020 **What do you like best about Zotero?** That I can have scientific journal articles organized by folders, and I can share them with a specific group of people and synchronize the account. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** There are many articles that do not synchronize because they are not located on the magazine's page. In some cases, it does not follow the numerical sequence of the citations. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I can store and add the bibliography while I am writing my article. ## Zotero Discussions - [Can you tell me, why the need to include so much information in a citation?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/can-you-tell-me-why-the-need-to-include-so-much-information-in-a-citation) - 2 comments, 2 upvotes - [How do i reference webpages?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/12678-how-do-i-reference-webpages) - 2 comments, 1 upvote - [What is Zotero used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-zotero-used-for) - 2 comments - [Which one is better Zotero or Mendeley?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/which-one-is-better-zotero-or-mendeley) - 2 comments - [How do I use Zotero software?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-do-i-use-zotero-software) - 1 comment - [View Zotero pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/zotero/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-16+05%3A52%3A05+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=ec10bfc2-8be3-4868-a1ee-0688970bf62a&secure%5Btoken%5D=c80181cc5cfb582e4067324cc35ad247033fb52c426c0de854c11d66a6645fc7&format=llm_user) ## Zotero Integrations - [Chrome OS](https://www.g2.com/products/chrome-os/reviews) - [Glasp](https://www.g2.com/products/glasp-2022-02-10/reviews) - [Notion](https://www.g2.com/products/notion/reviews) ## Top Zotero Alternatives - [Mendeley](https://www.g2.com/products/mendeley/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (248 reviews) - [EndNote](https://www.g2.com/products/endnote/reviews) - 4.1/5.0 (181 reviews) - [ReadCube](https://www.g2.com/products/readcube/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (172 reviews)