How URL Slug Generator works
A slug is the readable last part of a web address, such as how-to-bake-creme-brulee-at-home. This converter builds one from any title or string. It strips accents from letters, deletes apostrophes, turns every other symbol or space into a word break, joins the words with a hyphen or underscore, and lowercases the result. "10 Best Ways to Learn Next.js" becomes 10-best-ways-to-learn-next-js. Two optional settings shorten the result: Remove common stop words drops words such as the, of and to, and Max length cuts the slug back to whole words within the limit. The output shows the slug, a sample URL and its length in characters.
Title to slug examples
Real output with the default settings: hyphen separator, lowercase on, stop words kept, no length limit.
Accented letters
How to Bake Crème Brûlée at Home
how-to-bake-creme-brulee-at-home (32 chars)
Apostrophes and a colon
Don't Panic: A Beginner's Guide
dont-panic-a-beginners-guide (28 chars)
Apostrophes are deleted, so don't becomes dont, not don-t.
Ampersand and percent sign
Tom & Jerry's 50% Off Sale!
tom-jerrys-50-off-sale (22 chars)
The & is dropped. Type the word and in the title if you want it in the slug.
A hyphen and a decimal point
Men's Running Shoes - Size 10.5
mens-running-shoes-size-10-5 (28 chars)
Emoji and repeated punctuation
🚀 Launch Day!!!
launch-day (10 chars)
Text that is already snake_case
snake_case_title and kebab-case-title
snake-case-title-and-kebab-case-title (37 chars)
Existing underscores and hyphens are treated as word breaks and replaced with the chosen separator.
What each option does to the same title
Title used: The Complete Guide to Growing Tomatoes in Small Urban Gardens
| Settings | Slug | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Defaults | the-complete-guide-to-growing-tomatoes-in-small-urban-gardens | 61 chars |
| Remove common stop words | complete-guide-growing-tomatoes-small-urban-gardens | 51 chars |
| Max length 60 | the-complete-guide-to-growing-tomatoes-in-small-urban | 53 chars |
| Max length 40 | the-complete-guide-to-growing-tomatoes | 38 chars |
| Stop words removed and Max length 40 | complete-guide-growing-tomatoes-small | 37 chars |
Max length never leaves half a word: the slug is cut at the limit and then shortened back to the previous separator. That step always runs, so a word that ends exactly on the limit is dropped as well: The Complete Guide with Max length 12 gives the, not the-complete. A single word longer than the limit is cut mid-word because there is no separator to fall back to.
How characters are converted
| In the title | In the slug | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Capital letters | Lowercased (unless Lowercase is unticked) | iPhone 17 Pro Max Review gives iphone-17-pro-max-review |
| Letters with accents | Accent removed, base letter kept | São Paulo Travel Guide gives sao-paulo-travel-guide |
| Apostrophes, straight or curly | Deleted with no gap | What's New in iOS 26? gives whats-new-in-ios-26 |
| Spaces, punctuation and symbols | One separator, however many there are | Hello —— World! gives hello-world |
| Digits | Kept | 50% Off: Summer Sale (2026)! gives 50-off-summer-sale-2026 |
| Letters with no accent form: ß, ø, æ, ł | Dropped, leaving a word break | Fußball gives fu-ball; Smørrebrød gives sm-rrebr-d |
| Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and other scripts | Dropped | 日本語 title 2026 gives title-2026 |
| Symbols that carry meaning: +, #, & | Dropped | C++ vs C# in 2026 gives c-vs-c-in-2026 |
The tool does not transliterate. For ß, ø, æ or a non-Latin title, type a Latin spelling first (Fussball, Smorrebrod) and convert that.
The stop words that can be removed
Remove common stop words deletes these 15 words wherever they appear as whole words: a, an, the, and, or, of, in, on, at, to, for, is, are, with, by. No other words are removed.
- The Lord of the Rings becomes lord-rings.
- A Tale of Two Cities becomes tale-two-cities.
- To Be or Not to Be becomes be-not-be, which shows how the option can strip the meaning out of a short title.
- If every word in the title is a stop word, nothing is removed: The Of And stays the-of-and.
- Stop words are removed before the Max length cut, so combining both keeps more of the meaningful words.
How long should a URL slug be
No web standard limits the slug itself. The limits that exist apply to the whole address or come from your platform. The sitemap protocol requires each URL to be under 2,048 characters, and WordPress keeps a post slug in a 200-character field, which is also the top of the range on the Max length box here.
Those are ceilings, not targets. A slug works best when a person can read it in a link, say it aloud and guess the page from it. Three to six words usually does that. Long titles rarely need every word: growing-tomatoes-small-urban-gardens carries the topic of the 61-character slug in the table above in 36 characters.
Leave out anything that will date or change, such as a year, a price or a count of items, unless it is the point of the page. A slug should stay the same for the life of the page. If you do change one that is already published, set up a redirect from the old address so existing links keep working.
Step by step
- 1
Type or paste your title into the Title field.
- 2
Leave Word separator on Hyphen (recommended), or switch to Underscore if your system needs it.
- 3
Keep Lowercase ticked unless you need the original capitals preserved.
- 4
Tick Remove common stop words to shorten the slug, and set Max length (0 = no limit) if your platform caps it.
- 5
Copy the Slug or the Example URL, and check Length under Details.