PERRLA vs Mendeley: which fits student papers

You've saved your sources in Mendeley for a few semesters: the articles, their PDFs, your highlights. Mendeley Cite drops the citations into Word, and the bibliography builds itself. Then the paper is due, and you're still setting up the title page by hand, checking heading levels against the manual, and going down the reference list lowering the capitals in titles that came in from the database in title case. Mendeley keeps the library well. The paper around the bibliography is where Mendeley and PERRLA differ.

Mendeley in 2026

Mendeley has been owned by Elsevier, the academic publisher, since 2013. Mendeley Reference Manager is the current desktop app, for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and your library also lives online in a web library. In the app you build a research library, organize sources and PDFs, and annotate documents. The Mendeley Web Importer, a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari, saves sources from the web.

Mendeley Cite is its Microsoft Word add-in. It works in Word for Microsoft 365 and Word 2016 or later, in Word for the web, and in Word for iPad, and it inserts in-text citations, footnote citations, and a bibliography. Mendeley formats references with Citation Style Language (CSL), the same open-source style system Zotero uses, so it draws on a library of thousands of journal styles.

A free account includes 2 GB of personal storage and shared group libraries. More storage is a paid upgrade. Mendeley also has AI reading tools: a Reading Assistant that answers questions about one paper, Ask My Library for questions across your library, and Compare Experiments, which summarizes up to 10 papers side by side.

Three things older comparisons often get wrong:

• Mendeley Desktop isn't gone, but it's frozen. The older Mendeley Desktop app stopped offering new downloads in September 2022. In July 2025, Elsevier reversed course and said it would keep it running, with essential maintenance only and no new features.
• There's no mobile app. Mendeley's iPhone and Android apps were pulled from the app stores in March 2021. On a phone or tablet, you use the web library.
• Mendeley Cite doesn't work in Google Docs. Elsevier's own help center says Mendeley Cite is available only for Microsoft Word.

What PERRLA does that Mendeley doesn't

PERRLA covers the library side too, with reference management, research notes, and source annotation in the Reference Annotator. Then it keeps going, into the paper:

• Sets up the whole document in APA 7, MLA 9, or Turabian 9: title page, margins, spacing, page numbers, headings, tables and figures, and the references page or bibliography.
• Reads the finished paper against the format when you click I'm Finished: a citation after the period, a direct quote missing its page number, a reference you never cited, a title in the wrong case. It offers a one-click fix for most of what it finds.
• Works in Google Docs. PERRLA's Google Docs add-on works in all three formats, and your paper stays a Google Doc the whole time. Turabian footnotes work there too, as well as in Word and PERRLA Online.
• Asks APA's questions in the reference form. PERRLA has 47 reference types, each with guided options, so a retracted, republished, translated, or online-first article comes out in the form APA 7 shows.
• Gives you an editor of its own, PERRLA Online, alongside the Word add-in and the Google Docs add-on, with one library behind all three.

PERRLA's rule engine was written and tested by people against the APA 7, MLA 9, and Turabian 9 manuals. It's deterministic: the same source gives the same reference every time.

PERRLA uses AI in one place: looking up references. When a PDF you upload has a DOI or ISBN, PERRLA looks it up in Crossref or a book database, with no AI involved. When it doesn't, AI reads the first pages for details like the title and authors, and any author it names has to appear in the PDF, or it's dropped. The reference comes from the real record, and PERRLA never makes one up. Your paper is never sent to it.

Side by side

A real reference: the sentence-case problem

APA 7 wants article titles in your references in sentence case: capitalize the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns, and lowercase the rest.

A CSL style prints a title the way it's stored in your library. So if a title arrives in title case, it usually lands in your reference list in title case. Mendeley says so itself. Its help article on citation styles explains that “there is unfortunately no reliable way in which we can convert title to sentence case,” because software can't tell which words are proper nouns. That's an honest answer.

Here's what it looks like with a real nursing article. The publisher's record stores this title in title case. Printed as stored, the reference looks like this:

Rachman, M., & Yen, P.-Y. (2026). The Influence of Nurse Staffing and Workload on Medication Administration Errors: A Scoping Review. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 82(8), 7688–7703. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.70341

Here's the same reference in APA 7:

Rachman, M., & Yen, P.-Y. (2026). The influence of nurse staffing and workload on medication administration errors: A scoping review. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 82(8), 7688–7703. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.70341

Nine words are capitalized that shouldn't be, and it's easy to miss. Multiply that by 20 references and it's an easy way to lose points on a paper you researched well. The same goes for any detail in the record: the style formats whatever is stored. If a field is missing, or a journal article was saved as a web page, the reference comes out wrong, just neatly.

PERRLA's form flags a title typed in title case and offers Fix it for me, and I'm Finished checks the capitalization of every title on the references page before you submit. You'll still want to glance at proper nouns, but you won't be hunting for capital letters by hand.

What it costs

On price alone, Mendeley wins: it's free, and its free storage matches PERRLA's base plan.

• Mendeley: free, with 2 GB of personal storage. If you need more room for PDFs, Mendeley sells storage upgrades. Its prices show up after you sign in; as of August 2026, its paid plans ran from $55 a year for 5 GB to $165 a year for its top plan.
• PERRLA: $79.95 a year, $12.95 a month, or $129.95 for two years, with 2 GB of storage for the files attached to your references. PERRLA Pro ($99.90 a year) and PERRLA Unlimited ($124.90 a year) add more storage and Priority Support. Every plan includes every feature, every format, and every platform. See pricing for details.

You can try PERRLA free for 7 days, and the trial doesn't need a credit card. Every purchase comes with a 30-day full refund. If you're at a community college or completing an associate degree, you may qualify for a free PERRLA plan through your school, so ask your school or our support team. PERRLA also offers a 50% military discount for active military members and veterans.

Getting help

Mendeley: help comes through Elsevier's online Mendeley Support Center, a library of help articles. Many university libraries also teach Mendeley, so your campus librarian is a good first stop. One limit: Mendeley's help center says its support team doesn't create or modify citation styles, so if a style isn't formatting the way your instructor wants, fixing it is up to you.

PERRLA: a US-based support team at [email protected], answering Monday through Friday from 10 AM to 10 PM Central, and Saturday and Sunday from 1 PM to 10 PM Central. There are free PERRLA 101 live webinars every week, with a full demo and live Q&A, and PERRLA Pro and PERRLA Unlimited include Priority Support.

Bring your Mendeley library with you

PERRLA doesn't connect to Mendeley directly. But Mendeley exports your references as a BibTeX (.bib) file, and PERRLA imports .bib files. It takes two steps.

Step 1: Export from Mendeley.

1. Open Mendeley Reference Manager.
2. Select the references you want to bring over.
3. Choose Export in the action panel.
4. Choose BibTeX (.bib) as the format.
5. Save the file somewhere you'll find it.

Step 2: Import into PERRLA.

1. Open PERRLA Online.
2. Open Create reference.
3. Click Create from file.
4. Drag your .bib file in, or click Select a file.

Every reference in the file lands in your library in one pass. The import also works in PERRLA's Word add-in (use Select a file) and the Chrome extension, but not in the Google Docs add-on yet.

A few things to know before you start:

• Your PDFs don't come along. Mendeley's export lists your references but doesn't include the files themselves. Attach the PDFs you need to their references in PERRLA by hand.
• Highlights and notes stay in Mendeley. A .bib file can't carry PDF annotations.
• Import once. Importing the same file twice creates duplicates.
• Give author names a quick look. Names with particles or suffixes (“van,” “de,” “Jr.”) or accented letters can come in wrong.
• Check your titles. Imported titles keep whatever capitalization they had in Mendeley. I'm Finished catches reference titles that aren't in sentence case before you submit.

For more detail, see Feature Spotlight: Bring Your Entire Library to PERRLA.

Can you use both?

Yes. Keep Mendeley as your reading library, especially if your research group lives there. When you start a paper, export that paper's sources as a .bib file and bring them into PERRLA to write and format. Export only references you haven't imported before, so you don't create duplicates. If you're doing that every week, it's a sign to pick one home for your library.

Where Mendeley is the better tool

We won't pretend PERRLA is better at everything. Mendeley is the better pick when:

• Your budget is zero; Mendeley's core tools are free
• You write for journals in many citation styles; Mendeley draws on thousands of CSL styles, and PERRLA focuses on APA, MLA, and Turabian
• You work in a research group; a free Mendeley account includes shared group libraries
• You want AI help reading papers; Mendeley's Reading Assistant answers questions about a paper, and PERRLA doesn't do that
• You save sources in Firefox or Safari

If the bibliography in Word is the only part of the paper you want help with, Mendeley does that job, and for free.

Other comparisons

• PERRLA vs Zotero
• PERRLA vs EndNote
• PERRLA vs Grammarly
• PERRLA vs Citation Machine
• PERRLA vs Paperpile
• PERRLA vs Scribbr
• PERRLA vs Word's built-in references
• All comparisons

Questions about PERRLA and Mendeley