Perma
Depends
Confidence: Low
Low confidence . reviewed sources barely cover the actual product.
New check
Comparison
Perma vs Zotero
Perma lands on Depends, and Zotero lands on Worth it.
Zotero
Worth it
Confidence: Medium
Buy if you write papers or manage more than a handful of sources . it is free, open source, and taught by university libraries.
| Compare | Perma | Zotero |
|---|---|---|
| Verdict | Depends | Worth it |
| Best for | Law reviews and courts | Grad students and academics |
| Who it's not for | Teams wanting a simple URL shortener | Casual bookmarkers . browser folders suffice |
| Privacy | No known public vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed.⁴ | No known public vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed.⁶ |
| Support quality | No support evidence found | Docs and community forums only |
| Public sentiment | No genuine user reviews of surfaced; results were dominated by the unrelated PERMA wellbeing model and other 'Perma' brands.² | Users and librarians consistently call Zotero the best free reference manager, especially for students and literature reviews.10 |
| Biggest gotcha | Crawler found no security page content; request audit docs before institutional purchase⁴ | Sync storage is capped on the free tier; large PDF libraries push you into paid plans14 |
Pick Perma when
- Law reviews and courts
- Academic authors citing URLs
- Journalists archiving sources
When Perma is not a fit
- Teams wanting a simple URL shortener
- Businesses expecting team-collaboration features
- Buyers needing proven security documentation before adopting
- Any small team without citation or compliance needs
Pick Zotero when
- Grad students and academics
- Literature review-heavy projects
- Group bibliographies and labs
- Zero-budget researchers
When Zotero is not a fit
- Casual bookmarkers . browser folders suffice
- Teams wanting AI research summaries
- Market research teams needing survey platforms
- Firms requiring vendor SLAs and dedicated support
Sources
- New Functionality - Perma.cc Blogarchive.blogs.harvard.eduofficial
- Companies that use Perma (447)theirstack.comnews
news
- Perma.cc Security pageperma.ccsecurity
official
- Product security pagezotero.orgsecurity
- Zotero - Apps on Google Playplay.google.comreview
- Zotero and How It Works - CMU Research Guideslibguides.cmich.edureview
- Zotero for Mac - CSUSB LibGuideslibguides.csusb.edureview
review
- Game on: Mendeley versus Zoteroaudemic.ioreview
- Zotero: Personal Research Assistant - Hacker Newsnews.ycombinator.comnews
- Making a case for Zotero - C&RL Newscrln.acrl.orgnews
- play.google.complay.google.comreview