A free slug generator online for clean, readable URLs
Every page on your site needs an address, and the readable part at the end of it is called the slug. Get it right and people can tell what a link leads to before they click. Get it wrong and you end up with addresses like /?p=1428 or /10-BEST-caf%C3%A9-r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9-tips-2026%21, which look broken when shared and tell nobody anything.
This slug generator online cleans all of that up automatically. Paste a title and you instantly get a lowercase, hyphen-separated slug with accents converted, symbols handled, punctuation stripped and extra spaces removed. You can change the separator, keep or drop numbers, remove common filler words, set a maximum length, and preview the full URL with your own domain in front of it. There's a bulk mode too, so you can convert a whole content calendar at once and export it as CSV.
It's free, needs no sign-up, and everything runs in your browser, so nothing you type is uploaded.
How to use the slug generator
- Paste your titleType it or paste it in. The slug appears as you type, with a live character count and warnings.
- Adjust the optionsHyphens are the default and the safest choice. Set a maximum length, decide about numbers, and switch on stop word removal if your titles are wordy.
- Add your base URLOptional, but it shows the complete address exactly as visitors will see it.
- Copy and paste it into your CMSIn WordPress this is the Permalink field, in Blogger it's the Permalink setting, and in Shopify or Wix it's the SEO or URL field.
- Working on many posts?Switch to bulk mode, paste one title per line, and copy or download all the slugs at once. Duplicates are flagged automatically.
What is a URL slug?
A slug is the part of a web address that identifies one specific page, usually the last section after the final slash. In https://blogdada.com/tools/slug-generator-online.html, the slug is slug-generator-online.
The name comes from publishing. Newspaper editors gave each story a short "slug" so everyone in the newsroom could refer to it while it moved through production. The idea carried over to the web, where the slug is both a label for humans and a permanent identifier for the page.
A slug is not the whole URL. A typical address has a protocol (https://), a domain (blogdada.com), an optional folder or category path (/tools/) and then the slug. Most content management systems create the slug from your title, which is why a messy title produces a messy URL unless you tidy it first.
What makes a good slug?
- Short. Three to five words is ideal. Long URLs get truncated in search results and look unwieldy when shared in messages.
- Descriptive. Someone should be able to guess the page content from the slug alone.
- Keyword-relevant. Include the main phrase you want the page to rank for, naturally and once.
- Lowercase. Some servers treat
/Pageand/pageas two different URLs, which can create duplicate content. - Hyphen-separated. Hyphens are read as spaces by search engines; underscores are not.
- ASCII only. Accented and non-Latin characters are legal but get percent-encoded into long unreadable strings when copied.
- Stable. A good slug should still make sense in three years, which is why dates and words like "new" rarely belong in one.
/tools/slug-generator-online
/p=1428?cat=7&ref=home
/blog/wordpress-speed-tips
/blog/10_BEST_WordPress_Speed_Tips_You_Must_Read_in_2026!!
Hyphens vs. underscores vs. spaces
This question has a settled answer. Google treats a hyphen as a word separator and an underscore as a joining character, so running_shoes can be read as a single word "runningshoes" while running-shoes is clearly two words. Use hyphens.
Spaces are worse still: a browser converts each one into %20, so "best running shoes" becomes best%20running%20shoes. The generator removes spaces automatically, but it's useful to know why they can't stay.
| Character | In a slug | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Hyphen ( - ) | Recommended | Read as a word separator by all search engines |
| Underscore ( _ ) | Avoid | Joins words together in search engine parsing |
| Space | Never | Encoded as %20 and breaks when shared |
| Uppercase letters | Avoid | Case-sensitive on many servers, causing duplicates |
| Accents (é, ü, ñ) | Transliterate | Become long percent-encoded strings |
| &, ?, #, % | Never | Reserved characters with special meaning in URLs |
| Numbers | Fine | Useful in list posts, avoid years you'll have to update |
How long should a slug be?
There's no hard limit, but shorter wins. Most search results display only the first part of a URL before truncating it, and a shorter slug is easier to read aloud, type from memory and paste into a message without wrapping.
A practical target is under 60 characters and no more than five words. Drop everything that doesn't add meaning: articles, prepositions, exclamation marks and marketing words. "The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Best Running Shoes for Beginners" becomes running-shoes-for-beginners with nothing important lost.
Rule of thumb: if you can remove a word and the slug still describes the page, remove it.
Should you remove stop words?
Stop words are short, common words such as a, an, the, of, in and for. Removing them makes slugs shorter, and search engines ignore them anyway. That's why the tool offers a one-click switch.
But do it with judgement. Some stop words carry meaning, and removing them creates nonsense or changes the sense of the phrase. "How to Pick a Lock" should not become how-pick-lock. "Work from Home Tips" is fine as work-from-home-tips, because "from" is part of the phrase people search for. Read the result out loud: if it sounds like a telegram, keep the small words.
Slugs and SEO
The URL is a small ranking signal, and Google has said it plays a minor role. Its bigger value is practical:
- Click-through rate. Search results show a breadcrumb trail built from the URL. A clear path tells searchers what they'll get.
- Anchor text. When people paste a bare link, the URL itself becomes the visible text, and descriptive words help.
- Site structure. Consistent, readable URLs make a site easier for both people and crawlers to understand.
- Trust. Long strings of numbers and parameters look like spam, especially in emails and chat apps.
Once you've set the slug, our meta description generator can help with the snippet that appears underneath it in search results.
Changing a slug after publishing
Editing a slug on a live page breaks every existing link to it. Anyone following an old bookmark, an old email or a link from another website hits a 404 error, and the page loses the ranking value those links passed.
If you must change it, add a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. In WordPress, plugins such as Redirection or Rank Math handle this, and some create the redirect automatically when you edit a permalink. On other platforms you'll add a redirect rule in the site settings or the server configuration.
Change a slug when it's genuinely wrong: it contains a typo, a date you now have to update, a keyword that no longer matches the content, or a random string from an import. Don't change it just to squeeze in one more keyword. The risk usually outweighs the tiny gain.
Best approach: set the slug before you publish, while nothing links to the page yet. That's exactly what this tool is for.
Slugs in WordPress, Blogger and other platforms
WordPress
Go to Settings, Permalinks and choose the "Post name" structure so URLs use your slug rather than dates or IDs. Then edit the slug per post in the URL field in the editor sidebar. WordPress generates one from your title automatically, but it keeps stop words and can produce very long URLs, so pasting a cleaner slug is worth the ten seconds.
Blogger
Open the post settings panel, click Permalink and choose Custom Permalink. Blogger limits slugs to a certain length and strips some characters, so a short, clean slug avoids surprises.
Shopify, Wix and Webflow
Each has an SEO or URL field in the page or product settings. Shopify keeps old URLs and sets up a redirect for you when you change a product handle, which is a useful safety net.
Static sites and frameworks
In Jekyll, Hugo, Next.js and similar systems, the file name usually becomes the slug, so naming files well is the same job. Bulk mode is handy here: paste your list of post titles and get all the file names at once.
Slugs in other languages
You can use any Unicode characters in a URL, and browsers display them properly. The catch is that when a link is copied, shared in a plain-text email or logged in analytics, those characters appear as percent-encoded sequences. A Hindi or Russian slug can turn into a hundred characters of %D0%BF%D1%80, which is unreadable and easy to break.
Two practical options: transliterate into Latin letters, which the tool does for accented Latin, Cyrillic and Greek characters, or write the slug in English while keeping the page content in its original language. Many international sites do the second, and both approaches are fine for search engines. The generator's "Non-Latin letters" setting lets you choose, or keep the original characters if you prefer.
Slug ideas for different kinds of pages
Different page types call for slightly different naming habits. A few patterns that hold up well:
| Page type | Pattern | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Blog post | Main keyword, three to five words | /blog/wordpress-speed-tips |
| Category or hub | One or two broad words | /seo-tools |
| Product | Brand plus model, no stock codes | /shop/acme-leather-wallet |
| Service page | Service plus location where relevant | /services/web-design-agra |
| Comparison | Both names with "vs" | /mailchimp-vs-brevo |
| Free tool | What it does, in plain words | /tools/slug-generator-online |
| News or event | A date is acceptable here | /news/budget-2026-highlights |
Notice that only the last one includes a year, and that's because the content itself is tied to a moment in time. Everything else stays evergreen, so the URL can outlive several content refreshes.
Planning slugs for a whole site
If you're building or migrating a site, decide on the URL structure before you publish anything. Three questions settle most of it. Will posts sit at the root (/post-name) or inside a folder (/blog/post-name)? Will you use categories in the path, and if so, what happens when a post belongs to two categories? And how deep will the structure go, remembering that every extra folder makes URLs longer without adding much.
A flat structure with one folder level suits most blogs and small business sites. Deeper trees make sense for shops with real category hierarchies. Whichever you pick, stay consistent: mixed patterns across a site make it harder for you to guess your own URLs later, and harder for search engines to understand how pages relate.
Bulk mode is built for exactly this moment. Paste the full list of planned page titles, generate every slug at once, download the CSV and use it as the map for your build. The duplicate flag catches two pages fighting over the same address before either one exists.
Common slug mistakes
- Leaving the default.
/2026/09/23/post-title-here-draft-2helps nobody. - Stuffing keywords.
/best-cheap-affordable-running-shoes-buy-onlinelooks like spam. - Including the year in evergreen content, which forces you to choose between an outdated URL and a risky redirect.
- Repeating the category.
/recipes/recipe-for-pastasays "recipe" twice. - Using dates or IDs that mean nothing to a reader.
- Trailing punctuation or double hyphens left over from a messy title. The generator cleans these automatically.
- Duplicate slugs across posts, which many systems silently fix by adding "-2". Bulk mode flags these before you publish.
Frequently asked questions
What is a URL slug?
A slug is the readable part of a web address that identifies a specific page, such as best-running-shoes in example.com/blog/best-running-shoes. It usually comes from the page title.
Is this slug generator online free?
Yes. It is completely free, needs no sign-up, has no limit, and runs entirely in your browser.
How long should a URL slug be?
Aim for three to five words and under about 60 characters. Short slugs are easier to read, share and remember, and they look better in search results.
Should I use hyphens or underscores in URLs?
Use hyphens. Google treats hyphens as word separators but reads underscores as joiners, so top_running_shoes may be read as one word.
Should slugs include stop words?
Removing words like a, the and of usually makes a slug shorter and clearer, but keep them when removing them changes the meaning or makes the slug hard to read.
Can I change a slug after publishing?
You can, but the old URL will break unless you add a 301 redirect from the old address to the new one. Only change slugs when the benefit is worth the work.
Can slugs contain uppercase letters or non-English characters?
Technically yes, but lowercase ASCII is safest. Some servers treat uppercase and lowercase URLs as different pages, and non-Latin characters get percent-encoded into long, unreadable strings.
Does the slug affect SEO?
It is a small signal. A clear, keyword-relevant slug helps users understand where a link goes, which can improve click-through rate, and it appears in the breadcrumb trail in search results.
Create your slug now
A tidy URL takes five seconds to make and lasts as long as the page does. Go back to the slug generator online, paste your title, and copy a clean address you'll never need to fix.