To cite a website in APA 7th edition, use this reference format: Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of the page. Site Name. URL. In the text, cite it as (Author, Year). The citation generator builds this for you, but it helps to know the rules so you can check the result and handle the awkward cases.
The webpage reference format
A standard APA 7 webpage reference has four parts in this order:
- Author. Surname first, then initials: Smith, J. A. For an organisation, write the full name: World Health Organization.
- Date. The full publication date in brackets, year first: (2023, March 14). If only a year is shown, use (2023).
- Title of the page. In italics, in sentence case, so only the first word and any proper nouns are capitalised.
- Source. The name of the website, then the URL with no full stop after it.
Put together, a complete reference looks like this:
Smith, J. A. (2023, March 14). How tides are measured. Ocean Science Centre. https://example.org/tides
The in-text citation for that source is (Smith, 2023), or Smith (2023) if the author’s name is already part of your sentence.
A whole website versus a page on a site
There is a difference between citing one page and referring to a website as a whole. If you mention an entire site in passing, such as a database or a homepage you used generally, you do not need a reference list entry at all. You just name it in the text and give the URL in brackets, for example: The figures came from Statista (https://www.statista.com).
You only build a full reference when you are citing specific content: a single article, report or page. The format above is for that page. If you are quoting or paraphrasing something particular, you are citing a page, not the whole site.
When there is no author
Many web pages do not name a person. APA 7 handles this in two steps:
- If a company or organisation produced the page, use it as the author. Do not repeat it as the site name if they are the same; in that case you can leave the source element out.
- If there is no author or organisation at all, move the page title to the front, into the author position.
With no author, the in-text citation uses a shortened title in quotation marks: (“How Tides Are Measured,” 2023). The reference would start with the title instead of a name.
When there is no date
If a page shows no publication or update date, use n.d., short for “no date”, in place of the year. It goes in the same brackets:
Coastal Trust. (n.d.). Reading a tide table. https://example.org/table
The in-text version is (Coastal Trust, n.d.). Do not guess a date from the copyright line in the footer, since that often reflects the site, not the page.
When to include a retrieval date
Most web references do not need a retrieval date. You add one only when both of these are true: the page is designed to change over time, and there is no archived or dated version you can point to. Live dashboards, wiki entries and social media profiles are the usual cases.
When you do need it, place it just before the URL:
Retrieved June 14, 2026, from https://example.org/live-data
If the page has a clear publication date or a stable version, leave the retrieval date out.
A worked example
Say you are citing an article called “Sea levels are rising faster than expected”, written by Dana Lowe, published on 2 April 2024 on a site called Climate Watch, at https://climatewatch.example/sea-levels.
The reference list entry is:
Lowe, D. (2024, April 2). Sea levels are rising faster than expected. Climate Watch. https://climatewatch.example/sea-levels
In your text, you would write (Lowe, 2024) at the end of the relevant sentence, or “As Lowe (2024) reports…” if you name her directly.
To produce a clean entry without counting brackets by hand, paste your details into the APA citation tool and it will order the elements and apply the italics for you. If you are also working in another style, see how to cite in MLA and the comparison in APA vs MLA vs Chicago, or open the citation generator now.