Slug Generator — Create URL-Friendly Slugs
Convert any title or phrase into a clean, SEO-friendly URL slug. Removes special characters, replaces spaces with hyphens or underscores, normalizes accented characters, and optionally forces lowercase. Use it for blog URLs, product pages, CMS routes, and file names.
How to Generate URL Slugs
- 1Type or paste any text or title into the input field
- 2Choose your separator: hyphens (most common) or underscores
- 3The URL slug is generated instantly
- 4Copy the slug and use it in your CMS, router, or database
Key Benefits
- Converts spaces and punctuation to URL-safe characters
- Strips accents and normalizes Unicode characters to ASCII
- Toggle between hyphens (SEO-preferred) and underscores
- Instant output — paste a title and copy the slug in seconds
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a URL slug?
A URL slug is the human-readable segment at the end of a URL that identifies a specific page. In https://example.com/blog/my-first-post, the slug is my-first-post. Good slugs use only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens — no spaces, special characters, or accents. They should be concise, descriptive, and closely match the page title.
Should I use hyphens or underscores in slugs?
Hyphens are the standard for web URLs and are generally recommended for SEO purposes — search engines treat hyphens as word separators. Underscores are conventional in database column names, Python identifiers, and some programming contexts. For public-facing URLs, stick with hyphens unless your framework or CMS has a specific convention.
Does this handle accented characters?
Yes. Accented and diacritic characters are decomposed using Unicode normalization (NFD) and the combining marks are stripped — for example, 'é' becomes 'e', 'ñ' becomes 'n', 'ü' becomes 'u'. This produces clean, universally compatible slugs that work in any URL context without percent-encoding.
How long should a URL slug be?
Shorter is generally better for readability and shareability. Most SEO guidance suggests 3–5 descriptive words. Search engines can index longer URLs but may truncate them in result snippets. For a post titled 'The Complete Guide to Urban Gardening in Small Spaces', a slug like complete-guide-urban-gardening is more practical than a verbatim title slug. Include the most important keywords and cut filler words like 'the', 'a', and 'in'.
Can I include numbers in a slug?
Yes. Numbers are valid in slugs and can improve clarity — for example, 10-css-tricks or top-5-tools. However, think about whether the number will age well: a slug like best-practices ages better than best-practices-2023 for evergreen content. Year-based slugs are appropriate for time-sensitive content such as changelogs, annual reports, or news articles.
What is the difference between a slug and a permalink?
A slug is the short, human-readable segment that identifies a page — for example, getting-started. A permalink is the full stable URL that a page lives at — for example, https://example.com/docs/getting-started. Your CMS or router builds the permalink by combining the domain, any path prefix, and the slug. A slug is one input to the permalink; changing a slug after publishing breaks inbound links, so it is worth choosing carefully the first time.