Citavi

RATING:

4.5

(40)

About Citavi

Citavi is an all-in-one scholarly note-taking and reference management solution. It helps researchers organize, collaborate, take notes, and write/manage citations - all within one platform. Citavi can be used by individual researchers or teams. Its tools are designed to increase work efficiency, break down tasks, secure data, and more.

Citavi Pricing

Price listed is for 1 Citavi license, desktop only. Pricing varies for desktop vs web offering, bundle pricing is available. Special pricing for 6+ licenses. Please contact for more pricing information.

Starting price: 

$519.00 per year

Free trial: 

Available

Free version: 

Not Available

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Citavi Reviews

Overall Rating

4.5

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

4

Customer Support

4.5

Value for money

4.5

Functionality

4.5

Most Helpful Reviews for Citavi

1 - 5 of 40 Reviews

User Profile

Ganjar

Verified reviewer

Civic & Social Organization, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed February 2019

Reference Manager and Knowledge Manager in One Pack

PROS

Citavi is a reference manager which works well with various word processor software. However, Citavi is more than reference manager. It also provides tools for users to quote important texts, to write summary and to arrange the references according to your article's structure. After you have done those, when you are working with your article, Citavi will detect the current chapter of your article and will show you relevant references and knowledge (those quotations and summaries that you have made before). Very handy! Citavi also provides a free student version which allows users to manage up to 100 references. This is very generous, considering Citavi has excellent features necessary for writing scientific articles.

CONS

Citavi does not work on Mac. Users need to install third party software to allow Citavi in a Mac. That's a shame since this limits the user base.

Vendor Response

Dear Ganjar, Thanks so much for your review! I'm very glad to hear that you like Citavi so much. Regarding Mac compatibility, you'll be happy to hear that we are currently working on an online version that will work with Mac and Linux computers. It should be available later this year.

Replied February 2019

Paul

Higher Education, 5,001-10,000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed May 2021

The must have Literature program for research and education

By using a literature program you want to collect knowledge and want to share it. Working together in a team can be done now with the cloud version very easily without boundaries. Making comments, notes and using the citations for the resulting article can be done quickly and efficiently.

PROS

The list of features is very long. All in all it is the easyness of using the program at first which makes it possible to use it for beginners and also later on for real research. We can make Citavi as required for our students without making them troubles - it is the opposite. Often students discover that they get more time concentrating on the content and do not have to think about citation rules, e.g.

CONS

For sure there are missing features - this is always the case when you use a software as this is a living process. But the missing points are on a high level. Often it could be discovered that they have been built in already when asking the support people. So, there is no speacial feature which could be presented here.

Reason for choosing Citavi

First of all the easyness. The software is much "lighter" than other products. A very important point also is support: I never have seen any company in the last 30 years which is quicker but also coming to the point than Citavi. And we as university are not combined in any way with this company, we also have other software products for literature out of which I could choose from.

Vendor Response

Thank you very much for your kind review and detailed comments! We're very glad to hear that you think that Citavi is easy for students to learn but can also support more intense research later on. We're also very glad to hear that you've had a good experience with our support team!

Replied June 2021

Karen

Verified reviewer

Research, 1 employee

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review Source: GetApp
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

1

EASE OF USE

1

VALUE FOR MONEY

1

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

1

FUNCTIONALITY

1

Reviewed October 2023

Does not function as expected - promise refunds they do not honour

Terrible. I have contacted them three times and they have promised finance will contact me about a refund. They don't and no refund is forthcoming.

PROS

The sales pitch is great. The technical support do come back to you even if it is to say hey that is how our product works sorry about that.

CONS

It does not do what you need it too. It is very cumbersome and has bizarre quirksYou need to spend a lot of time watching videos and working it out to learn how to do things that should be pretty easy to do. They promise refunds but do not honour them.

Reasons for switching to Citavi

Because the sales pitch was great it sounded like it had more functionality and was more modern. In reality it was hard to use and didn't have all the features you need.

Miriam

Writing and Editing, 5,001-10,000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed February 2021

The best knowledge organisation programme

PROS

- It offers everything you need for research (finding texts, analysing texts, formatting the in-text citations and the Works Cited, etc.) - It helps you keep track of your tasks (which texts do I still have to read/scan/borrow, etc.) - The customisable categories and keywords are extremely helpful when you quickly need to find all titles concerned with a specific topic. - Allows you to compile grouped lists of titles (e.g. all titles from a certain time span or all titles within a certain category). - Allows you to search all of your quotes and all OCR’d pdfs in your project at once. - The support is phenomenal! They answer extremely fast and always propose helpful individual solutions. I once had a pretty big bug in my project and the support spend several days solving it – even though I’m only a PhD student. Long story short: I couldn’t write my PhD thesis without Citavi.

CONS

It might be a bit too complex for undergraduate students, but with their 10-25 pages papers and 30 secondary sources max, they don’t need a knowledge management system anyways. I’d say the best time to start using Citavi is in your first M.A. semester.

Vendor Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to write a review. I'm very glad to hear that you've found Citavi to be so helpful for writing your PhD thesis!

Replied June 2021

Jakob

Research, 1 employee

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed June 2021

Extremely powerful tool, withoud which I could not work

I have been using Citavi since my last years of high school all through university and for my PhD thesis. Without citavi, I would not know how to effectively organize my sources. With citavi, it is super easy to keep track of thousands of sources and also retrieve them again after years, even if you didnt know anymore that you have a source.

PROS

The product is incredibly powerful. In my opinion, there are two core functions: on the one hand, you can use Citavi to organize materials (like papers and other files). On the other hand, you can use citavi to facilitate citing those materials when writing papers. But, you do not have to use both. Already, the organizing function is incredibly powerful.

CONS

Personally, I am not missing anything. But you have to keep in mind that it is an incredible powerful tool, so you need time to discover those functions you need most.

Vendor Response

Thank you for taking the time to write a review, and glad to hear that you like Citavi so much.

Replied September 2021