Before comparing features, there's a fact worth knowing: EasyBib and Citation Machine aren't independent competitors. Chegg acquired Imagine Easy Solutions — the company behind EasyBib, Citation Machine, BibMe, and Cite This For Me — in 2016 for $42 million. All of them have been part of the same company ever since. That doesn't mean they're identical in every detail, but it explains why a head-to-head search for "which is better" doesn't turn up the kind of real differences you'd expect between two separate products.
Trusted by students at
TechCrunch's coverage of the acquisition is explicit: Imagine Easy Solutions was "the company behind" EasyBib, Citation Machine, BibMe, and Cite This For Me, with EasyBib as its first product and the others added through earlier acquisitions of its own before Chegg bought the whole group. Chegg has owned all of them since 2016, running them as separate-branded sites rather than merging them into one product.
That shared ownership is the honest answer to "which one is better" for a lot of what people are actually asking: you're not choosing between two companies with different incentives or different underlying approaches to citation accuracy — you're choosing between two storefronts belonging to the same one.
EasyBib's Plus plan runs $9.95/month flat, covering 30 papers a month, access to 7,000+ citation styles including APA and Chicago, unlimited grammar checks, and plagiarism detection. A higher Plus & Chegg tier at $19.95/month removes the paper cap and bundles in Chegg's broader textbook-solutions and Q&A products.
Citation Machine's paid tier also runs about $9.95/month after a 3-day free trial, and draws the same free-vs-paid line on grammar checking specifically: the free version caps you at 20 grammar suggestions, while the paid plan makes grammar checking unlimited and unlocks its plagiarism checker. Citation styles listed include APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian. The near-identical $9.95/month price point on both is consistent with them running on shared backend infrastructure, though neither company states that outright.
If what you're actually deciding is "should I pay roughly $10/month for grammar checking and plagiarism detection bundled with a citation tool," that's a real question — but it's the same question whether you buy it from EasyBib or Citation Machine, since you'd be paying the same parent company either way for a similarly priced plan with similar limits.
For just generating a citation, you don't need either paid tier. StudyPilot's citation generator covers APA (7th edition), MLA (9th edition), Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, and Vancouver — enter a source's details manually or paste a URL or DOI for auto-fetch, then export the full bibliography — free, without a 30-paper monthly cap or a trial that reverts to a grammar-suggestion limit.
StudyPilot's citation generator covers APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, and Vancouver — paste a URL or DOI, or enter details manually — free, with a full bibliography export when you're done.
Generate Citations Free →