Mendeley

Mendeley is a reference manager and academic network for organising papers and citations. It stores your PDFs, extracts their metadata automatically, and lets you annotate and search them. Its Word plugin inserts citations and builds bibliographies, and its social features let you follow researchers and discover papers in your field.

Key Features

• PDF library with automatic metadata extraction
• Annotations and search across your papers
• Word plugin for citations and bibliographies
• Academic social network for following researchers
• Group libraries for collaboration
• Free plan with 2 GB storage

Pricing

Prices as listed in 2026 research. Always check the official site for the latest price — plans change. Free plan: Yes — it has a free plan.

How it works

The platform is free with 2 GB of cloud storage, and Plus costs $4.99 a month, or $55 a year, for more storage and features. It is owned by Elsevier, the academic publisher, which gives it deep integration with Elsevier's journals and databases.

Mendeley is a solid choice for researchers who want a reference manager with social features built in. Zotero is the better free, open-source option, but Mendeley's PDF management and academic network are genuinely useful — especially if you already use Elsevier journals.

Pros and Cons

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