Bookends

Bookends has been the Mac academic's reference manager since before the phrase "cloud sync" existed, and it still behaves like software written for one platform by people who use it. Your references and PDFs sit in a local database you can point Finder at. Searching PubMed, library catalogues or Google Scholar happens inside the app, and what comes back lands in your library with its metadata filled in. When you write, it formats citations for Word, Pages, Mellel and Scrivener — that last one matters if you are working on something book-length.

$74.99 buys a licence with two years of updates. When the window closes, nothing locks: the app you have keeps running, and a new two-year window costs $49.99 whenever you decide you want one. In practice that is under twenty dollars a year if you always upgrade, and nothing at all if you do not.

Read the boundaries before paying. Mac only. The iOS app, Bookends On Tap, is bought separately. Sync is your own iCloud or Dropbox folder, which means no subscription and also no support line when it misbehaves. And sales are final the moment the registration code is issued, so run the demo properly — import a real chunk of your library and write a real paragraph with it — before you buy.