URL Slug Generator

How to use this tool

1. Enter your inputs. Each field is labeled with what it expects.
2. Read the result instantly. Numbers update as you type or change inputs.
3. Adjust to test sensitivity. Change one input at a time to see what moves the result most.
4. Cross-check the formula in the section below if you want to verify the math.
5. Copy or screenshot the result for later. The site does not save anything; close the tab and inputs are gone.

About this tool + how it works

This tool runs 100% in your browser - the libraries load from a public CDN and the math runs on your device. Nothing is uploaded to a server. The underlying logic is:

1. NFKD-normalize and strip combining marks
2. lowercase
3. replace non-alphanumeric runs with '-'
4. trim leading/trailing '-'

You can verify by opening the browser developer tools and watching the Network tab; you'll see no requests fired during normal use beyond the initial page and library load.

What makes a good URL slug

A slug is the human-readable part of a URL path that identifies a page, the "url-slug-generator" in this page's address. A good slug is short, lowercase, hyphen-separated, and built only from unreserved ASCII characters so it survives copying, sharing, and indexing without being percent-encoded into noise.

How slug generation works, step by step

The tool applies a deterministic pipeline. Each step removes a class of URL-unsafe characters until only lowercase letters, digits, and hyphens remain:

1. NFKD-normalize, then strip combining marks  (café -> cafe)
2. lowercase everything                          (Hello -> hello)
3. replace every run of non-alphanumeric with -  ("a, b" -> a-b)
4. collapse repeated hyphens to one              (a--b -> a-b)
5. trim leading and trailing hyphens             (-a-b- -> a-b)

Because the steps are pure transforms, the same input always yields the same slug, which is what makes slugs safe to use as stable, canonical URLs. Optionally you can also strip common stop words (a, an, the, in, of, and) and cap the length so very long titles do not produce unwieldy paths.

Slugs and SEO

• Keep the keyword, drop the filler. A slug like best-cafes-san-jose tells both readers and search engines what the page is about; padding it with numbers and stop words dilutes that signal.
• Use hyphens, not underscores. Search engines treat hyphens as word separators but underscores as joiners, so red_shoes can read as one token while red-shoes reads as two.
• Lowercase only. Some servers treat /About and /about as different URLs, which fragments links and analytics; an all-lowercase slug avoids duplicate-content traps.
• Do not change a live slug casually. Editing a published slug breaks every existing link and bookmark unless you add a 301 redirect from the old path.

Common slug mistakes and pitfalls

• Leaving accented or non-Latin characters in. Without transliteration, café becomes the percent-encoded caf%C3%A9 in the URL, which is ugly and easy to mangle when shared.
• Using spaces or capital letters. Spaces become %20 and mixed case can create duplicate URLs; always lowercase and hyphenate.
• Underscores instead of hyphens. They look similar but search engines split words on hyphens, not underscores.
• Slugs that are too long. A slug echoing an entire headline is hard to read and share; trim to the core keywords, ideally under about 60 characters.
• Changing slugs without redirects. Renaming a published slug without a 301 redirect 404s every inbound link and loses any ranking the old URL earned.

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Frequently asked questions