URL Encoder & Slug Converter

URL encoding converts characters that are not safe to include in a URL (spaces, ampersands, special characters) into a percent-encoded format browsers can parse. Slug generation does the opposite — it takes a phrase like a blog title and converts it to a lowercase, hyphenated string safe for use as a URL path segment. Both operations run here without any server call.

Slug best practices for SEO

Good slugs are short, lowercase, and hyphenated. They include the target keyword and drop stop words (the, a, and, for). A slug like /blog/custom-software-development-cost-2026 outperforms /blog/post?id=452&title=Custom+Software+Development+Cost+in+2026 for both human readability and Google's ability to understand the page topic from the URL alone.

When to encode vs not encode

Encode user-supplied input before inserting it into a URL query string to prevent injection. Do not encode the entire URL — only the parameter values. Path segments use a slightly different encoding than query parameters; encodeURIComponent encodes everything except letters, digits, and -_.!~*'() which is appropriate for query values.

This tool handles Unicode correctly: it strips diacritics before slugifying, so "Café au Lait" becomes cafe-au-lait rather than failing or producing encoded characters in the slug.