Free tools
Free citation tools
Eight free tools, each solving one specific step of catching a bad citation before a judge does. No signup required for basic use — pick the one that matches what you're checking right now.
Not legal advice. These are automated database checks — you and your counsel remain responsible for reviewing every result before filing.
Free Citation Legitimacy Checker
Paste up to 5 case citations and get an existence and quote-accuracy verdict on each in seconds — free, no signup, 3 checks/day.
Citation Format Detector & Bluebook Helper
Paste text and get every case citation detected and reformatted into standard Bluebook form, ready to drop back into your brief.
AI Sanctions Risk Calculator
Answer a few questions about your firm's AI drafting workflow and get a directional risk score, plus a shareable badge for your team.
Vendor FVR Score Request
Ask us to run another citation-checking product against our held-out eval set and get its published False-Verify Rate — an apples-to-apples number you can compare against ours.
Retraction Checker for Medical Citations
Paste up to 5 PubMed IDs, DOIs, or ClinicalTrials.gov numbers and instantly see which exist and which the source flags as retracted (3 checks/day).
AI Hallucination Risk Self-Test
A 10-question self-test that scores your firm's AI-drafting workflow in a couple of minutes, with point-by-point scoring and real sanction-case examples so you can see exactly where the risk sits.
Pre-Filing Citation Verification Checklist
An interactive, printable checklist built on our published methodology, with vertical-specific items for legal, tax, medical, and government filings.
Sanctions Database Explorer
Filter live aggregate counts across our public AI-citation sanctions database by country, legal field, outcome, and month, to see exactly where the risk is concentrated.
More free tools
Free FDA enforcement tools by the same team, at Argus HQ: an FDA warning-letter lookup, a repeat-offender checker, and a daily enforcement snapshot.
These tools support Layers 1-2 of our verification model at most: existence and quote accuracy. For full 3-layer verification including proposition support, see /verify or /pricing.
Which tool solves your problem?
Every one of the tools above solves exactly one step of the pre-filing verification workflow. Use this guide to pick the right one first — a wrong tool wastes 30 seconds and gives you a low-signal answer.
- “My AI research tool suggested a case. Is it real?”
- → Free Citation Legitimacy Checker. Paste up to 5 citations, get an existence verdict per citation in under 30 seconds. This is the single failure mode behind every sanction in our database — you catch it here or you catch it in the ruling.
- “I have a whole brief to verify before filing.”
- → Full verify tool. Upload PDF or Word; every citation extracted, checked for existence and quote-match. 3 briefs/month free.
- “My citations are in a weird format. Are they Bluebook-compliant?”
- → Citation Format Detector & Bluebook Helper. Reformats detected citations into standard Bluebook form.
- “How much sanction risk does my firm’s workflow have?”
- → AI Sanctions Risk Calculator (quick directional score) or AI Hallucination Risk Self-Test (10 questions, scored with sanction-case examples).
- “I’m evaluating a citation-checking vendor. What’s their real accuracy?”
- → Vendor FVR Score Request. We run the vendor’s product against our held-out eval set and publish the False-Verify Rate. Apples-to-apples number vs. our published 0.000%.
- “I’m citing medical or scientific research. Any retractions?”
- → Retraction Checker for Medical Citations. Paste PubMed IDs, DOIs, or ClinicalTrials.gov numbers; retraction status returned per citation.
- “What’s my whole pre-filing routine supposed to look like?”
- → Pre-Filing Citation Verification Checklist. Interactive, printable, built on our published methodology, with vertical-specific items for legal / tax / medical / government filings.
- “Where in the country is sanction risk concentrated?”
- → Sanctions Database Explorer. Filter live counts by country, jurisdiction, legal field, outcome, and month.
Frequently asked questions
- Are the free tools really free?
- Yes — every tool on this page is free for the listed rate limit (typically 3-5 checks per browser per day). Paid plans lift the rate limits, add Layer 3 propositional support, and activate the $10,000 fabrication warranty. See /pricing.
- Why so many tools instead of one big tool?
- Because every stage of the pre-filing workflow benefits from a purpose-built check with the minimum-required input. A quick “is this case real” check should be one paste and a verdict; a full brief audit should extract every citation for you; a risk assessment should be 10 targeted questions, not a general-purpose “how’s your AI policy” survey. One big tool would push cognitive load onto the user for every check.
- Which tool should I use first if I’ve never used Citation Safe?
- Free Citation Legitimacy Checker — paste the last three citations from anything AI drafted for you this week. Zero setup, zero signup, and you’ll see immediately whether your current workflow is missing fabrications.
- Can I use these tools for non-legal citations?
- Medical citations (PubMed / DOI / ClinicalTrials.gov) are covered by the retraction checker. Tax, government, and other verticals have dedicated pages under /suite. General-purpose academic citations are not currently covered.
- Do these tools require a Chrome extension?
- No — every tool on this page runs in the browser directly. If you want in-context verification (highlight a citation on any page, get a verdict), install the Chrome extension separately.
- Is there an API?
- Yes — API access for legal-tech vendors and in-house legal ops is available on the Suite plan. See /for-ai-vendors.
Free tools not enough?
The full verification tool takes any brief (PDF or Word) and returns a per-citation report with Layer 1 + Layer 2 (and Layer 3 on paid plans). Plans from $12/mo. $10,000 fabrication warranty on every paid check.