How to Cite a Website in APA Format
Websites are the most commonly cited source type in student papers — and also the one with the most "what if" situations: no author, no date, an organization instead of a person. This guide gives you the exact APA 7th edition format for every case, with copy-ready examples.
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Open the Citation GeneratorThe basic APA format for a website
An APA 7 reference for a web page has four building blocks — author, date, title, and source:
Note three details that trip students up: the date includes the month and day when available, the page title is italicized and written in sentence case (only the first word, proper nouns, and the first word after a colon are capitalized), and the URL is given in full with no "Retrieved from" label and no final period.
ExampleWebsite with no author
If no individual author is named, check whether an organization is responsible for the content — if so, the organization is the author:
When the author and the site name are the same (as above), APA says to omit the site name to avoid repetition. If there is truly no author at all, move the title into the author position:
Website with no date
Use (n.d.) — "no date" — in place of the year. If the content is likely to change over time (like a frequently updated statistics page), add a retrieval date:
In-text citations for websites
The in-text citation is always the author (or organization, or short title) plus the year:
| Situation | Parenthetical | Narrative |
|---|---|---|
| Author known | (Chowdhury, 2024) | Chowdhury (2024) explains… |
| Organization as author | (World Health Organization, 2023) | The World Health Organization (2023)… |
| No author | ("The History of Citation," 2022) | — |
| No date | (Smith, n.d.) | Smith (n.d.) suggests… |
Websites rarely have page numbers; for a direct quote, use a paragraph number or section heading instead: (Chowdhury, 2024, para. 4).
Common mistakes to avoid
- Citing the whole website instead of the page. APA cites the specific page you used, with its own title and URL. A whole website is only mentioned in text, not in the reference list.
- Adding "Retrieved from" before every URL. APA 7 dropped this — only use "Retrieved [date], from" when a retrieval date is needed.
- Using title case for page titles. APA uses sentence case: The health benefits of walking, not The Health Benefits of Walking.
- Forgetting (n.d.). Never leave the date position empty.
Citing social media and other web content
The website pattern extends to social media with two tweaks: the username appears in square brackets after the author, and the first 20 words of the post act as the title, followed by a bracketed description of the format:
For an Instagram photo use [Photograph]; for a Facebook update, [Status update]. A blog post is cited like a journal article, with the blog name (not italicized site name) as the container: Author, A. (2024, May 1). Title of post. Blog Name. URL.
Mentioning an entire website
When you refer to a whole site rather than a specific page — "we collected responses via SurveyMonkey (https://www.surveymonkey.com)" — no reference entry is needed. Give the URL in parentheses in the text and move on. Only specific pages and documents earn reference list entries.