Zotero v. EndNote v. Mendeley

Credit for Table

The original table is from Northwestern University's guide, it was adapted by Todd Quinn for UNM.

Bibliographic Managers: A Comparison Table

Zotero*

EndNote**

Mendeley***

Cost

Free,
open source

$116;
one-time fee

Free

UNM Libraries support

Yes

Yes

No

Operating Systems

Mac, Windows, Linux

Mac and Windows

Mac, Windows, Linux

Word processor
integrations (plug-ins)

MS Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice

MS Word, LibreOffice

MS Word

Desktop app

Yes

Yes

Yes

Official mobile app

Yes

Yes

No (third party)

Web platform

Yes, create account

 Yes, create account Yes, create account

Syncing among platforms

Yes

Yes

Yes

Annotate/highlight PDFs

Yes

Yes

Yes

Add tags and notes to citations

Yes

Yes

Yes

Search collection and PDFs

Yes

Yes

Yes

Share citations / collection

Yes

Yes

Yes

Citation formats (default)

12

200+

15

Add citation formats

Yes, 5000+

Yes, 7000+

Yes

Works with LaTeX / BibTex

Yes

Yes

Yes

User Community Network

Yes

No

Yes

Developer

A nonprofit*

Clarivate

Elsevier

Developer support

Zotero site; user community

EndNote site; Phone support (human)

Mendeley site; user community

Notes for each Bibliographic Manager

*Zotero notes

  • Corporation for Digital Scholarship is a nonprofit created via an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant
  • Free, but a nominal charge for extra cloud storage space
  • Must use the Chrome browser to integrate with Google Docs
  • To share PDFs via a group, create a private group on site
  • UNM Libraries provides a few introduction workshops each semester
  • Zotero guide

**EndNote Software notes

  • Clarivate owns Web of Science and ProQuest (library subscription databases)
  • Cost is $250 for non-students (one-time fee)
  • Human help via 1-800 number
  • No cloud storage limit
  • Web platform is best used as pass-through for sharing
  • EndNote guide

***Mendeley notes

  • Elsevier is a major publisher of scholarly journals and owns ScienceDirect (a library subscription database)
  • Free, but a nominal charge for extra cloud storage space
Subjects: Research Tools