URL Slug Generator — Convert Titles to Clean URL-Friendly Slugs
Generate clean URL slugs from any text. Converts spaces to hyphens, removes special characters, handles accents, and produces SEO-friendly lowercase URLs.
A good URL slug is readable, lowercase, hyphenated, and free of special characters. "How to Make Crème Brûlée at Home!" should become how-to-make-creme-brulee-at-home, not How%20to%20Make%20Cr%C3%A8me%20Br%C3%BBl%C3%A9e%20at%20Home!. The CalcHub Slug Generator handles the transformation — accent removal, punctuation stripping, consecutive hyphen collapsing — in a single click.
What the Generator Does
- Lowercases all text
- Converts accented characters to their ASCII equivalents (é → e, ü → u, ñ → n)
- Replaces spaces with hyphens
- Removes special characters: !, @, #, $, %, etc.
- Collapses consecutive hyphens:
--→- - Trims leading and trailing hyphens
- Optionally removes stop words: a, the, in, of, for, etc.
Examples
| Input | Slug Output |
|---|---|
| "How to Calculate BMI" | how-to-calculate-bmi |
| "What's the Best PDF Editor? (2026)" | whats-the-best-pdf-editor-2026 |
| "Crème Brûlée Recipe" | creme-brulee-recipe |
| "C++ vs Python: Which is Better?" | c-vs-python-which-is-better |
| "Top 10 SEO Tips & Tricks" | top-10-seo-tips-tricks |
How to Use It
- Open CalcHub and navigate to the Slug Generator.
- Paste your article title or page name.
- Toggle options: stop word removal, max length, separator (hyphen vs underscore).
- Copy the generated slug to use in your CMS, blog, or codebase.
Why Slugs Matter for SEO
Google reads URL slugs as part of relevance signals. A URL like /blog/how-to-calculate-bmi tells both users and search engines what the page is about before they click. Compare that to /blog/post?id=4712. Readability and keyword inclusion in slugs consistently correlate with better click-through rates.
Hyphen vs. Underscore
Google's John Mueller has confirmed that hyphens (-) are treated as word separators in URLs, while underscores (_) are not. So word_count_tool is read by Google as one word "wordcounttool," while word-count-tool is read as three separate words. Always use hyphens in URL slugs.
Stop Word Removal Option
For shorter, cleaner slugs, remove common stop words:
- "How to Make the Perfect Espresso" →
make-perfect-espresso - "What is a Mortgage Calculator" →
mortgage-calculator
This is a matter of preference — shorter slugs look cleaner but lose some natural language signal.
How long should a URL slug be?
Under 60–75 characters is a common recommendation. Google truncates very long URLs in search results, and longer slugs are harder to share and remember. Remove stop words or abbreviate where possible, but never sacrifice clarity for brevity.
Should I include numbers in slugs?
Generally yes if they're meaningful ("top-10-tools", "2026-tax-guide"). Avoid them if they'll become outdated quickly ("best-laptops-october-2026" will look stale in a year). For evergreen content, date-free slugs are better.
What happens to special characters like apostrophes?
Apostrophes are stripped entirely. "What's New" becomes whats-new. The possessive meaning is lost but the word is still readable. Emojis are also stripped (they get URL-encoded otherwise, creating ugly strings like %F0%9F%98%80).
Related tools: Text Case Converter · URL Encoder Decoder · HTML Tag Stripper