--- title: Zotero Reviews meta_title: 'Zotero Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 99 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Zotero works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.4 review_count: 99 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-12' parent_category: name: Education url: https://www.g2.com/categories/education --- # 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. Not my favorite reference manager **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 29, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** What I like most about Zotero is the simplicity of its interface which makes its use easy and simple, in addition to this it is very easy to synchronize and capture the metadata that comes from web pages thanks to the plugin. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I do not like the lack of function to the classification of references, it should have a function to classify each reference (for example: Read, Unread, Chosen, Not chosen, Doubt, Favorites) This function is essential for systematic reviews, for this reason I hardly use this software, I also don't like the fact that I can't make anotations in the downloaded PDFs. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero has allowed me to perform automatic import of metadata easily and almost without errors, it also allows me to import from databases, in addition to this it allows to make citations in word processing programs, it could improve a lot in the organization of the references because the labels are not very useful in my opinion. Zotero has one functionality that has been very useful in my professional and academic life and is receiving recommendations based on my interests. ### 2. Manage citations much faster **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 01, 2020 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero saves me a lot of time with citations and references. If I make changes to a particular reference, the document updates with the corresponding change to all of the citations. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Sometimes, it is difficult to make manual changes within a document. Everything has to be done within Zotero, so you can't make changes to the citations/references directly in Word. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing citations and references. I have used Zotero to prepare manuscripts and manage citations for my dissertation. ### 3. Best Referencing tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sharma V. | Researcher, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 29, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I use zotero for resource management in scientific articles. Its easy to use, free available (Up to certain data limit), and reliable. The best thing about zotero is the saving PdF of resources which you can access even in offline mode. Once the data is synced it can be accessed from anywhere. There is a huge range of citation styles for almost all the required journals and are easily available. Extra space can also be bought by paying required money for annual usage. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** The only thing i dislike about zotero is the complexity of making custom citation styles. Its not at all described clearly and every time i tried, i couldn't make it. the support team has also just provided me the information which is already available but i couldn't get the custom citation style made. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Highly Recommended **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am using Zotero for referencing and bibliography preparation for reports and articles. ### 4. its free easy to use to collect organize and site the research, sync laptop data on cloud. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** revar p. | Teaching Assistant, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 04, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Managing essays and research papers made so much easy. I can save my sites and information, organize it all. the best part is its create automatic bib file of our research papers. each file have a different icon like pdf, thesis, patent all have a different icon with the help of this we can easily identify our files. the best part about Zotero is we can access our data online and offline both. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Zotero doesn't have the android application it is only bad part about it because we need a laptop or personal system for using this. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I m using Zotero for my research purpose with the help of this I can easily manage my all papers. and I don't need to carry my system all the time because I can use it online also. I can use it anytime anywhere. ### 5. Free Citation Manager at its best **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Emmanuel N. | Chemical/Process Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 12, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero is a free citation software that helps to store references and it is user friendly. You can recall the reference material whenever it is needed. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** You need a little knowledge on HTML writings to have full control of the program, such as creating your own referencing style. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Zotero is a free software that helps you to manage and track your reference materials at any point in time. I recommend it when carrying out a research. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero helps to solve the problem of having to type my references every time I need them for my research work. I can now store my references in Zotero and recall them anytime I need it. ### 6. Importance of using Zotero for research purposes **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 24, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero is an excellent application for anyone into research. It helps you organize all your relates research content at one place and lets you manage your collection of data very efficiently. I love the zotero add on your files and browser which is very useful in the organization of papers. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** The user interface could be improved by adding more user-friendly features which will make research more exciting. It can add labels and other similar features to attract more research aspirants. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Use it for an enhanced experience in Research. Gives an organized view to your research content so you can manage easily. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm using Zotero for my research purposes to organization my collection of research content. ### 7. One of the easiest free ways to track citations **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 22, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I really love how compatible the program is with multiple systems and with Word, Google Chrome and Safari. I’m able to work from my home computer (Mac) and from work (PC). **What do you dislike about Zotero?** There are times when Zotero will crash when I am updating my Word document. Also, I am not always able to edit my citations within me document when using my Mac. So, if I wanted to go back and add an additional source (so have the numbers 3,4 following information instead of just 3), I am unable to. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am able to reformat papers for different journal articles incredibly quickly, which saves me time and energy. ### 8. Nice tool for Literature review notes **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gaurav S. | Instructional design assistant, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 17, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Many options possible for saving the documents, creating tags **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Highlighting the important content could have been better **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Its a nice tool for researchers. They should give it a try. It has also a nice option of google chrome extension which can directly add information from the web **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** To do a Literature review in an organized way ### 9. Great free tool that I recommend to my students **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Joy Suzanne H. | Production Control Buyer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 29, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Easy to clip citations from the web and add them to your project in Microsoft Word. Huge time saver for students and writers. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Because it is an open-source resource, sometimes updates don't come at the most convenient times, and support is not what you would get with a paid service. Also, I really wish they worked more directly with Scrivener. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** There's just nothing quite like it. I really liked EndNote, but you can't beat Zotero's price (FREE) for such a great product. It's not perfect, but it's the only reference manager I recommend. If you use Zotero and have issues, there are great forums to answer questions you may have. Use the ones on the Zotero website, but Google can also find you great blogs for students with tutorials that will help learn the system. It's pretty user-friendly and intuitive to use, and would be worth paying money for, but it's free. Don't spend money on a paid tool as long as this one is available! **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a professor, Zotero is the go-to reference manager I use for my own writing and for my students. It saves an incredible amount of time in writing and research. No more time wasted formatting citations or keeping track of them. ### 10. A Software Review on Zotero **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rahman B. | Student, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 09, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** The features of Zotero I found really helpful are : - It allows you to save your library locally on your computer. - it is very good with citing references on technical reports. - it allows you to save webpages and add notes on saved webpages. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** The features of Zotero i did not like are : - It does not have as many referencing styles as other referencing applications - It's not very good at referencing websites - It doesn't always get the correct information from documents. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero makes it easier for me to reference my technical reports and journals. ### 11. Review for Zotero **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eric B. | Research Librarian, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 12, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** After installing the Zotero Connector icon to the right of your web browser’s address bar, you can click on the icon to save web pages, lists of articles (or specific citations from a list of articles), PDFs, and individual citations directly to a Zotero collection. If a PDF of an article is available, it will be included when the article is saved to a Zotero collection. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** If metadata is missing from a citation after adding it to a Zotero collection, you have to search for the same citation elsewhere in order to copy the metadata into the citation in the Zotero collection. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Learn to use Zotero by reading instructional materials. I found a PDF titled Zotero Workshop, which I saved for future use. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I conduct literature reviews, including database searches, for researchers in STEM. For one recent literature review, I saved citations from multiple sources into EndNote, then I was able to sync the entire EndNote bibliography to Zotero in a new collection, and I sent the Zotero collection to the researcher as an email attachment. The researcher was then able to open the attachment in Zotero to create a new collection of citations. ### 12. A Review on Zotero **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tomiwa O. | Technical Partner, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 08, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** An easy and simple way to reference articles, projects and journals. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** It makes detailed mistakes sometimes. Like giving out a wrong author, wrong page number and sometimes one has to cross check its result before inputting them. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** it makes the concept of referencing enticing. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Technical writing problems, referencing problems. ### 13. Best tool to keep your research safe. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** The best thing about zotero is you save your research work in it. It's very easy to save research papers in Zotero and then cite them in your paper with one click. It gives you the option of citing in different styles which is a very good feature. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Sometime it takes a lot of time to sync your work with email **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am working on a digital marketing research. with the help of Zotero I keep record of all the research i have studied ad then site them in my research in Harvard style. ### 14. Great for Academics **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Holly E G. | Graduate Student, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 21, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I really love that the ISBN can be entered to search for a book or article. I also love the notes and pdf storage features. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Sometimes it can be slower to lead and get overwhelelmed, but overall it is an amazing product. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Use the search function, store pdfs, it is a great product for graduate students starting research. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use ti for citation management, storing notes, storing pdf documents. ### 15. Using Zotero for Managing References **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 16, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero has some of the standard features of reference management software that are very positive. You can integrate with Microsoft Word so you can automatically insert in-text citations and generate a bibliographic list at the end based on your pre-specified format settings. The software allows you to manually enter references. There is also an official Zotero plug-in for Chrome that allows you to easily import references you locate on the web. Teamwork is easy with Zotero as you can create shared libraries everyone saves to and you can also export libraries for other users. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** One thing that is lacking is the ability to search a library of reference entries like you can do with Mendeley's website. Having access to the entries other users have generated for a reference in the past has saved me a lot of time and effort in the past. You can create your own custom formatting templates but the process is not as intuitive as would be ideal. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** I would consider whether or not you need software to use in a team setting. If so, then if everyone is on board, Zotero could be a great option. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** We especially use this software because of its ability to be used across a whole team of researchers. We have a shared library that everyone can access and add to. This is ideal as everyone is working on their own pieces of the project often remotely and independently. ### 16. References made easy **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 02, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Build up your references library: just save link from Pubmed and add it! **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Somewhat heavy and clunky -slows down overall working of Word quite significantly and frequently crashes **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Freeware for referencing Quite easy to get your head around **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Automatic references creation, automatically formatted as per journal guidelines and/or personal preference ### 17. Zotero **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 11, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** The best part of Zotero - it is completely FREE. It is an open-source research tool that I can rely on. I can use Zotero to help keep track of sources used for any kind of research: annual reports, literature review, ect. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I have not had a ton of issues with Zotero so I have nothing to report for the "What do you dislike?" section. I am glad it's free unlike many other types of software that are out there. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Use this free software before paying to use anything else. God luck researching your work projects! **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Zotero for what it does best, a research tool that catalogues any sources I used as references for any particular project I have worked on. ### 18. Easiest way to compile citations **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sarah Z. | Contractor, Research, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 01, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I love how Zotero connects to my web browser allowing me to instantly record an article’s citation with the click of one button. Once it’s recorded in my Zotero library, it even saves a pdf link to re-access the article and is easy to organize citations, share, and add notes. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** There’s not much that I don’t like about Zotero. One small nuisance is that the software doesn’t run in the background on my computer, so I have to make sure it’s open on my computer before I begin work each day. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** With Zotero, I can create bibliographies for research grants and new publications. ### 19. Zotero is the greatest piece of software for academic writers since the word processor. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ryan H. | Political Reporter, Higher Education, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 14, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Organization. Citations are perfect. What isn't to love. It's great. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Nothing. It's an amazing piece of software. Fantastic. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** All of my citations, research articles all organized and indexed. This software is amazing. ### 20. Makes organization SO EASY **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 08, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I love that you can share folders with a group to make collaboration easy. I also enjoy how easy it is to use with Microsoft word, drag and drop citations are wonderful. I also enjoy that I can add and choose which citation style I use incredibly easily. The fact that all of that is free is even better! **What do you dislike about Zotero?** The only thing I dislike is that when I move a citation to a different folder it keeps it in the older folder as well. Besides that small detail there is very little wrong with the program as a whole. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** definitely try it out and you'll never switch to anything else! **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** It makes organizing my thesis project and other projects so easy and better than folders in my laptop. ### 21. You get what you pay for. **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** It is easy to incorporate new citations as you search google or other databases. Zotero easily uploads new citations. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** It is difficult to change the format of Zotero citations. This includes both for one user trying to change the citations for the appropriate publication format and for transitioning between users. I was working with a colleague and had to completely redo the whole Zotero library incorporation into the Microsoft word document because I was trying to include two new sources. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Before use, see if it will support the final citation format the you require. In other words, if the bibliography needs to be in the PLoS Biology Journal format, can Zotero meet those requirements. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero is useful for incorporating citations into Microsoft word documents used for scientific publications and other literature. ### 22. Great tool to store literature for research **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 19, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Free and easy to save literature at the library. Inserting bibilographay at the end **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Sometimes Zotero makes my laptop slow so I need to close it and reopen it **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Created different folders for each projects so easy to navigate multiple projects ### 23. Can’t reference without it **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 22, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Ease of adding references, in text citations and references lists. Easiest platform that I’ve used. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I wish there was a spacing function, so you could choose whether you want single or double spacing when creating a reference list. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using for research manuscripts. Very easy to use and organize references into folders. ### 24. Best for: collaborating, multi OS, user friendly, opensource **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michele (Mike) D. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I use Zotero in University research environment, I was looking for a product capable to cope with the following requirements - easy to use - capable to support collaboration between different users - available for the different operating systems used by the several researchers in my laboratory (Linux + windows) - free - open source Zotero was the winner of my selection **What do you dislike about Zotero?** 1) it lacks in terms of consistency between the user interface representation of documents and how they are really saved as files and folders Let me explain with an example: You have one publication divided into 2 two files and you ad some extra note and extra files All this in the user-interface appears as it was once single topic and to belong to the same container/item This is good, this is what you want for making a sense to these many files Unfortunately, if you look the real folders and files that Zotero creates behind the human-interface you find out the files have been stored in different folders at the same hierarchy level and with no-sense names with the result that without Zotero it is impossible to make an obvious sense of the many files and folder you have in your repository 2) I would like to have an interface for creating custom fields **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** I am happy with Zotero we sill see how far we can go with it Have a trial: I believe you will like too **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** As described in the previous section I was looking for a REFERENCE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE with the following characteristics: - easy to use - capable to support collaboration between different users - available for the different operating systems used by the several researchers in my laboratory (Linux + windows) - free - open source I selected it about 2 months ago and I showed it to my colleagues explaining to them what I was aiming for (collaboration, easy to use, etc, all the above points) After a while, one of them switched to Zotero and more recently another researcher did the same In the future, we plan to move it to the server for having no storage limits In conclusion, I am very happy with this product Thank you to Zotero contributors for such good free product ### 25. Excellent way to organize articles **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sarah M. | Researcher, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 10, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I love the ability to have multiple folders available for different projects I am working on. This allows me to stay organized and quickly track down literature I am looking for. I also love zotero connector and how I can send articles to my library just by pushing a simple button. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I cant 'undo' deletions of files on zotero so I have previously deleted whole folders when I didnt mean to and I was unable to undo this action. I had to go to the full library and re-sort my files **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero allows me to stay organized, collect literature, and share readings and folders with my team easily. Sharing an entire library is much easier than emailing individual files. ### 26. Best free research source management software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 26, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Easily organizes research articles, news articles, website posts, blog posts, etc and other sources, powerful extraction capabilities for accurate citation automation. Saves hundreds of hours of references section woes **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Interface is quite outdated looking. Reminiscent of early 2000s software. Could use a visual Upgrade **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Best free option! **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Time manegement, source management, powerful, cross platform/device capabilities ### 27. Okay for free **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 08, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** This software is free for use, so if you don't utilize citations often, it may be the way to go. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** It's hard to format citations for publication and it's hard to share content of the citation library with others. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Before extended use, match sure that the final citation format is appropriate for your use. I had difficulty modifying it to make it compatible for the journal in which I wanted to publish. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have utilized Zotero to include citations within text for Scientific publications. It is compatible with Microsoft word, which is the main software that I use for writing manuscripts. ### 28. Will require some effort to get an ideal workflow **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 30, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Best feature is the browser integration. You can directly save articles into Zotero and subsequently make notes in Zotero. Equally good is automatically pulling the metadata and generating Bibtex effortlessly. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Annotation: You still need to open in a separate PDF reader to annotate. If you automatically open in PDF reader, then you can't use the browser extension and you will have to sync Zotero with your hard drive or network drive, which takes up space and/or is less portable and/or will fail if you're not logged into something. Syncing: Good luck if you want to sync with a Sony Digital Paper. Even though both systems use webDAV and it seems as though you ought to be able to sync automatically and push articles to a DP, I have never gotten this to work. If you try syncing Zotero to Box and then to DP, it is a bit unreliable and in addition Zotero doesn't do two way syncing it seems. Filing: If you were looking at one folder, and you use the browser extension to save an article, it automatically gets saved to that folder regardless of its relevance. This has led to frequent misfilings and losing papers. Firefox: There are many useful extensions for Zotero. They are not compatible with the new Firefox versions. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's much easier to keep track of references and take (non PDF annotation) notes. ### 29. Perfect for graduate students **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2019 **What do you like best about Zotero?** It keeps all your citations in one place for term papers, comps readings, and theses. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** It takes a bit of effort to get to verythingnorganized how you want, and sometimes things have to be entered manually. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** It’s the best thing to organize citations, whether you’re a student or a researcher. ### 30. Zotero Review **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Think Tanks | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** The different collections levels allows me to easily sort and share my research. It allows collaboration with notes inside the organization and in a way that it is sorted by topic or research project **What do you dislike about Zotero?** The Zotero connector in Google chrome is often buggy and won't correctly collect the metdata **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Use Zotero to engage with files and sources before gathering information and use the notes section to record desired information **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** It allows us to quickly share important research backgrounds and transfer PDF's internally ### 31. Zotero for better managemt of bibliography **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Adithyaa J. | Managing Director, Education Management, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 14, 2017 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Availability of space to record notes and important points about a article to get them in short time without going through the whole paper is the main feature of zotero that we love the best. There are also other features of zotero like tagging and sorting an article with various importance and quality that are best of zotero. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** There is nothing much that is to dislike with zotero but their look and feel can be improved and the unavailability of internal PDF Viewer is something that I dislike with zotero. With better looks and internal PDF Viewer Zotero will receive 10 on 10 in this review **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Zotero is an excellent tool for managing your citation source, sharing them with your collaborators and finally composing and editing bibliography. I highly recommend zotero to your organization. This product will be a great tool in saving time for both instructors and students. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Bibliography management is a biggest and most time consuming job in any academic and science society. This problem of managing, sorting and sharing of the important file is solved with zotero, It also stores the bibliographic citation data which can be used while editing a report or books and in the end total bibliography can be obtained in a single click. ### 32. Zotero makes citations easy **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 06, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I love that I can easily use Zotero to create citations straight through my browser, with the click of a button. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I sometimes run into difficulties where the paper I am trying to cite from the browser doesn't connect with the Zotero app on my computer, in which case I have to restart the program. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use it for research and writing papers. ### 33. A great tool for managing sources **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Grace K. | Assistant Professor, Learning and Information Literacy Librarian, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 14, 2017 **What do you like best about Zotero?** My favorite things about Zotero include that it is free and open source software, it is pretty easy to use, it automatically saves PDFs and other files, it can easily import metadata, and it saves a screenshot of the website I save. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** One of my least favorite things about Zotero is that the interface is a little bland, and you must have it downloaded and installed on a device you are using it on. Full functionality is not available in the web version. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Go for it! It may take a little time to learn how to use it, but once you are in the habit of using it it is going to save you so much time. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero allows me to easily save and organize journal articles, web pages, and other sources of information and easily access them again later. ### 34. Zotero is my favorite paper manager **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero organizes all my research papers. I love that it automatically syncs my papers to my account so I have all my research with me wherever I am. I also really like the citations features, which lets me import citations into word.It's also nice that I can search through all entries as well as keep papers in multiple folders. These two options help me organize everything. I like that you can update entry names based upon pdf metadata. This makes it way easier to get all the information for a paper because the whole process is automated. If I had to pick just one feature as my favorite, it would be that I can click the zotero button on my browser to automatically add a paper to my library. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Would like an easier way to use tags, like maybe a color coding or something. I also think it would be nice to create an arbitrary sorting method for creating a bibliography, so that references were ordered the way I list them in the paper I am writing. Like maybe I could put a 1,2,3,etc. next to each paper in another column. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** If you need to keep track of papers and use multiple devices or are collaborating on a project, Zotero is a great way to go. Also manages citations for when you are writing a paper yourself. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Collaboration with Zotero is especially useful. I can fill a folder with papers on a research project. My colleagues can highlight and comment. It's a great way to share. ### 35. Referencing Made Super Easy!! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gautam A. | Graduate Teaching Assistant, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 06, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero provides access to all collected papers, articles and books from anywhere and you do not need to be working on your desktop/laptop. Zotero also helps me to organize my articles in different folders for my different assignments. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Sometimes, the referencing does not come up in an uniform way even if I select the same style, mainly if there are multiple authors. Like I use APA style for my papers and sometimes when there are multiple authors, it will take "et all" and sometimes it will have all their surnames which are confusing. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Everybody who has to use references in their writing should start using Zotero as it would make your life much easier. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a PhD Student, I have a write a lot of papers for work and Zotero has helped me in streamlining my referencing. It also helps me to store all the articles I need at one place. The best part is it provided me access to these papers from anywhere. ### 36. Organizes my citations, but I don't know how to use all of its functions **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 29, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** It serves as a place where I can keep all of my citations and resources. I like that I can categorize them and search based on category. I like that it will retrieve metadata for me. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I really feel like I don't know how to use very much of the features. Have had trouble before even exporting a bibliography. I have not been able to figure out how to utilize Zotero as a plug-in within my word documents. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** There seems to be a pretty steep learning curve (that I still haven't figured out all the way) **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Writing academic and industrial research reports. ### 37. Used to be great, on the decline **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 27, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** the software saves all your documents without taking memory on your computer, easily accessible from all devices, great to use with Word extension, I love that it cites in correct format and keeps track of citations to create a bibliography for you **What do you dislike about Zotero?** the software is no longer connected to firefox and now i must use the standalone version to monitor my articles, it is more difficult and more effort than before. all my negative comments are because of this issue. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** great and easy to use, once you take the time to learn the software easy to use! **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** writing manuscripts for publications ### 38. A thoughtfully developed free reference manager that packs a punch **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2017 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Back in college I used Zotero for everything. Its seamless Firefox integration and later integration with Word were exactly what I needed, and unlike EndNote, I could install it on all my own devices with no trouble and no fees. I now use it very occasionally to curate my personal reference library, and it's still got the magic, although I no longer use the advanced features. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** While many, many custom styles were available, it was a HUGE pain to start from one of these and modify it slightly. This may have changed, since I rarely need to cite in a specific, obscure style these days -- it's worth a look. Also, everyone else uses EndNote. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am a freelance researcher as well as an editor and Zotero manages my references excellently. I only use it when I'll be the only one handling the reference section since it's so nonstandard, but it's lightweight and flexible and does a terrific job. ### 39. This Software is a Huge Time Saver **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Elise B. | Freelance Artist, Fine Art, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 04, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I was originally very leery of this software because the librarians at my university used to push so hard for students to use it. Normally, the content they suggested would crash my faulty laptop and then not even work once it was installed. This software, on the other hand, is amazing and makes citing sources a breeze. Especially when you've been toggling between too many internet tabs and you can't keep them straight anymore. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** It took me a little longer than I expected to learn how to use it. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Don't assume that just because it is free, it will be of lower quality. It's actually everything you need. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** In drafting emails/projects where I have had multiple internet sources open and could easily mis-cite something, Zotero keeps me organized. ### 40. Incredible Asset to studying and research **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Trevor G. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero has been easy to install, use, and integrate with my web browser to create editable citations in a multitude of formats. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I don't understand much about how it uses proxies, but that hasn't been a hinderance to my use. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** This is a great, free tool that I wish I had known about years ago. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** This lets me organize scholarly citations for research papers. ### 41. Awesome Stand-alone Pinterest for Academics! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Libraries | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 25, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** Zotero's functionality, in terms of the ability to save "snapshots" of websites needed for academic research, combined with it's ease of use, make it the best website research assistant software I've used. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** It took me some time to figure out how to setup some of it's sharing features, in order to synchronize between devices when I initially discovered the application. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Zotero is great for anyone performing research, for saving and coming back to research items, and for creating needed citations about items as well. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero is useful as a research assistant software application, allowing for easy website saving and retrieval. ### 42. Useful reference management tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 08, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I like that it is free (but you can pay for additional storage if you want). Being able to save content directly from the web as I'm browsing is really nice. Being able to sync my library across multiple computers has been a benefit, as I work from home two days a week. I also like that you can capture screenshots of web pages you want to archive this has come in handy numerous times. The ability to share my files with coworkers has also been useful to me. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I've had issues with it shutting down and not saving some of the most recent information added. It doesn't have nearly as many citation styles as Endnote. I normally use Google Chrome but downloaded Firefox in order to use Zotero. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** In addition to being a citation and bibliography manager, I also use it to keep track of the many PDFs I collect while writing a paper. It's nice to have everything all in one spot, that is readily accessible. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zotero is useful to me when writing final reports and policy recommendations by helping me manage all my references and resources, inserting citations and creating bibliographies. This is a huge time saver when you are required to collect and manage multiple references. ### 43. Convenient citation management software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Renewables & Environment | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 29, 2017 **What do you like best about Zotero?** It is free open source software, so no extra cost involved. Easy to use, one click citation save options. Have an option to export references from many research databases - Orbis, Jstor etc.. Integrated with Word & Libreoffice, can even drag-and drop citation into MS Word. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** Sometimes citation format is off for some of the more specialized styles, e.g. Bluebook for legal docs, and needs to be corrected manually. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** It is a great open source citation management software that has many of the same capabilities as some of the pricier options - EndNote or Refworks. There is no support per se since it is open source but there is an active user community and developer provides tutorials. It is very easy to learn. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used Zotero among other citation managers - EndNote, Refworks, and Mendeley for several years during graduate school. It is a helpful tool that allows you to gather and transfer references from other databases and webpages to your personal research database, create bibliographies as well as easily search and sort references. It supports a variety of styles (MLA, APA etc). ### 44. Easy to save references **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I like how chrome add-on app of Zotero which saves so much time in saving references. In addition, the information of the reference (authors, publishers, publishing time, etc.) can be retrieved right away in zotero once being saved. Other functions are pretty similar to Mandeley. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** The sync function is good but it is slow from one computer to the other. The graphic design of user window is boring and lack of innovation but works fun if one just care about saving references. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** Download the chrome add-on if you use Chrome. Use sync function if you want to work in different locations on different PC. Do not use the new version to add reference, window of old winder is more user-friendly. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Organizing references is very convenient with Zotero. It has all the publishing styles that one need. ### 45. best free reference manager **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 30, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** its a free software available to eyeryone **What do you dislike about Zotero?** problems with stability when handling large data **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** its the best free reference manager **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** managing references within literature ### 46. Easy online portal for tracking and sharing references **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2017 **What do you like best about Zotero?** References can be easily organized into folders and shared. Also, you no longer have download anything; everything can be done from the website. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** If you have a lot of references, the view can be a little overwhelming and it can be hard to organize if you leave a project and then return to it later (i.e., if you don't organize your references as soon as you add them, it can be harder later). **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** It allows collaborators to share sources they've found; this can be especially useful for papers. ### 47. Effective and Useful **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2017 **What do you like best about Zotero?** I like that I can save papers and looks at them after a while. And also I can organize all the papers in different folders so it make it easy to find them without downloading them. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** It works better with firefox than with chrome, and I usually use chrome more. **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** There are other software that do the same that Zotero but this one really caught my eye. **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps when I'm doing research and need to cite information. ### 48. Review for Zotero **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 04, 2018 **What do you like best about Zotero?** It is user friendly and freely available. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** I like this software, there is nothing I don't like about Zotero **Recommendations to others considering Zotero:** I would highly recommend this software **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** To add and organize references for scientific research papers ### 49. Intuitive Citation Management Software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 30, 2017 **What do you like best about Zotero?** The collaboration and list features are very helpful. **What do you dislike about Zotero?** The interface is quite dated and could use some modernizing **What problems is Zotero solving and how is that benefiting you?** Collaboration on large research projects. ## 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?page=2§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-22+08%3A25%3A43+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=025a1c8c-775e-407c-b65b-35b3c3334b9a&secure%5Btoken%5D=875e482d6ab73604bcb21b12da1faf3796ba0b2b8cf76ce7f659f546546f3425&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)