Step-by-step explanation:
MLA citation is used in literature and composition fields, it uses in-text without endnotes or footnotes. Its format is is (author's last name + page number) without a comma. On the other hand, APA citation is commonly used in term papers, essays and scientific papers. It uses in-text with a reference list accompanying. The format is author and year of the work by putting them both in parentheses (separated by a comma) and for the references list the writer needs to follow the pattern author, date, title, source.
Knowing these characteristics we can conclude that is best to use APA instead of MLA when we are writing more scientific documents and when we want to use reference lists to accompany in-text citations.
I hope you find this information useful and interesting! Good luck!