Free alternatives · Industry and professional
CitedWriter
An AI writing assistant for papers and theses that only inserts citations it has checked are real, and logs every AI suggestion so you can show your supervisor.
A free alternative to Jenni AI, built by Surge Software. Free. You pay only what third-party services cost us, at cost.
Live at citedwriter.com
Walkthrough
See CitedWriter in action
The problem
What it solves for a business
For: Students, PhD and PG scholars and researchers writing in English, including Indian scholars working to UGC and AICTE norms.
- AI writing tools can produce references that do not exist, and supervisors now ask whether sources are real.
- Students are expected to declare how they used AI, but most tools keep no record they can show.
- Writing tools charge monthly subscriptions, and users of leading tools report renewals without reminders and hard-to-find cancel options.
How it works
CitedWriter, step by step
- 01
Start from a template
Pick a UGC PhD, AICTE report or journal template and your citation style.
- 02
Find and verify papers
Search 5 open scholarly indexes; a paper can only be cited once its DOI and title are confirmed on Crossref or OpenAlex.
- 03
Write with AI help
Press Tab to accept autocomplete, or ask the AI to paraphrase, shorten or expand in your own style.
- 04
Read your sources
Upload PDFs, ask questions and get answers that quote the page, with the quote checked against the page text.
- 05
Check and export
Run the similarity and AI-likeness pre-check, share the AI-use log, and export to Word, LaTeX, Markdown or PDF.
Comparison
CitedWriter vs Jenni AI
| CitedWriter | Jenni AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free. You pay only what third-party services cost us, at cost. | Plus $12/month, Pro $29/month; capped free plan |
| Citation checked before insert | Yes, DOI and title verified on Crossref/OpenAlex | Partial: Claim Confidence reviews claims after writing |
| Similarity pre-check | Yes, with UGC 2018 level | No |
| AI-likeness report | Yes | No |
| AI-use record | Action-by-action log you can share, plus a declaration | Partial: AI Declaration text |
| Indian thesis templates | UGC PhD and AICTE templates | No |
| Subscription | None; usable without an auto-renewing plan | Monthly or annual plan |
| Real-time co-editing | Not yet: read-and-comment link | Yes |
Jenni AI details are taken from its public website and may have changed since (Plus $12/month, Pro $29/month; free plan limited to 10 autocompletes a day (checked 25 Oct 2026)).
Why switch
Advantages over Jenni AI
Checked before it goes in
A citation cannot be inserted until its DOI and title are confirmed, rather than reviewed after writing.
A log you can hand over
Every AI suggestion is recorded in a tamper-evident log that anyone can verify in the browser.
Built for Indian theses
UGC PhD 2022 and AICTE templates, a structure checker and the UGC 2018 similarity levels.
No subscription to cancel
Everything is free with fair-use caps; optional paid AI is charged at cost from prepaid credit.
Features
What it does today
- AI autocomplete and paraphrase, shorten, expand and your-voice rewrite in a rich editor
- Citation search across OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, Crossref, arXiv and PubMed, with a verification gate before insert
- APA, MLA, IEEE, Chicago (author-date and notes), Harvard and Vancouver; BibTeX and RIS in and out; Zotero import
- Chat with PDFs and with your draft, with page-cited answers and every quote string-checked
- Literature-review tables with custom columns and supporting quotes, exported to CSV or Word
- Similarity pre-check with UGC 2018 level, AI-likeness report, claim check and thesis structure check
- Tamper-evident AI-use log with a disclosure statement, browser verification and a share link
- Free reference checker and thesis reference audit (PDF or Word): each entry marked verified, mismatch or not found
Use cases
How teams use CitedWriter
PhD literature review
A scholar verifies and cites papers while drafting Chapter 2, then builds a comparison table of methods and findings.
Before thesis submission
A student runs the reference audit and similarity pre-check and fixes flagged entries before the plagiarism check.
AI-use declaration
A student shares the AI-use log and disclosure statement with their guide.
Checking a reference list
Anyone pastes a list into the free reference checker, with no sign-in, to spot invented entries.
Under the hood
Where AI is used, and where it is not
The model
Qwen (qwen3.8-27b) on Surge's own vLLM server; Claude Sonnet only if the local server fails and the user opted in with prepaid credit, charged at list price. AI output is English only.
Rules and code
The AI never writes citations: invented author-year or DOI text is stripped, citations come only from verified library papers, and every quote is string-checked against its source.
People in the loop
The writer accepts or rejects each suggestion and chooses which verified papers to cite; it is positioned as a research assistant, not a ghost-writer.
Book a working session
A working session with our architects on one of your use cases. You bring a process and sample documents; we leave you with a scoped plan: model, hosting, integrations, timeline and cost range.