URL slug generator
Turn Russian and Ukrainian text into clean, human-readable URLs — instantly, right in your browser: transliteration, lowercase, special-character cleanup. Free and no sign-up.
What the tool does
Everything happens locally — your text never leaves the browser.
Instant transliteration
Two schemes — Russian and Ukrainian: г→g or г→h, and й, ї, є follow the rules of the language you pick. The result updates as you type.
Cleans up the noise
Special characters, punctuation, repeated and trailing separators are removed automatically. What remains is lowercase Latin letters and digits.
Hyphen or underscore
Pick the separator your CMS expects. For SEO we recommend hyphens — and so does Google.
Slugs, clean URLs and SEO: the essentials
What a slug is
A slug is the last part of a page's address — its name in the URL. For an article at example.com/blog/kak-vybrat-web-studiu, the slug is kak-vybrat-web-studiu. Russian-speaking web culture even has a dedicated term for such addresses — ЧПУ, a "human-readable URL": both people and search engines can tell what the page is about before clicking.
A slug affects several things at once. Keywords in the address are a small but real relevance signal for search engines. A readable URL looks more trustworthy in search results and in messengers, so it gets clicked more often. And meaningful addresses help the team itself: the structure of the site is visible right in the link.
Why not just keep Cyrillic in the URL
Cyrillic is technically allowed in addresses, but it travels badly: copy /статья from the address bar and it becomes /%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8C%D1%8F — a long, unreadable string that breaks the look of links in emails, documents and social posts. A Latin transliterated slug has none of these problems: it is shorter, independent of encodings and looks the same everywhere. That is why even sites with a fully Russian- or Ukrainian-speaking audience usually choose Latin URLs.
Rules of a good slug
- Keep it short. Three to five words are enough; stop words ("how", "and", "the", "for") can safely go.
- Keep the keywords. Leave the words people will actually search for — usually the nouns from the headline.
- Hyphens, not underscores. Google explicitly recommends separating words with hyphens:
web-studioreads as two words, whileweb_studiomay be treated as one. - Lowercase only. To a server,
/Pageand/pageare different addresses; capital letters breed duplicates. - Latin letters, digits and one separator. No spaces, quotes or punctuation.
Russian vs Ukrainian transliteration
The tool supports both schemes, and the difference matters — the rules are not the same. Russian «г» becomes g (gorod), Ukrainian «г» becomes h (hory), while Ukrainian «ґ» maps to g. Ukrainian «і», «ї», «є» give i, yi, ye; Russian «й» usually becomes y or i, «щ» becomes shch, «ы» becomes y. Run a Ukrainian headline through the Russian scheme and native speakers will read the result as a mistake — pick the scheme by the language of the source text.
Why a slug must not change after publishing
A URL is a permanent address: other sites link to it, readers bookmark it, search engines index it, newsletters carry it. Changing the slug breaks all of those connections: old links start returning 404 and the accumulated link authority evaporates. That is why a slug is chosen once — before publishing. If you do have to change it, set up a 301 redirect from the old address to the new one and update internal links and the sitemap — that way you keep both your visitors and most of the SEO value.
Generate a slug above, review it with your own eyes — the automation is good at cleaning characters, but only you can pick the words that matter — and paste it into your CMS.
FAQ
Hyphen or underscore — which is better for URLs?
Hyphen. Google explicitly recommends separating words in URLs with hyphens: hyphenated words are recognized as separate, while an underscore can glue them into one. Underscores only make sense where your system's internal conventions require them.
Does the slug affect SEO?
Yes, moderately. Keywords in the URL are a small relevance signal, and a readable address improves click-through in search results and on social media. A slug alone will not rank a page, but clean URLs are part of a healthy SEO foundation.
Can I use Cyrillic in a URL?
Technically yes, but when copied, a Cyrillic address turns into a long percent-encoded string like %D1%81…, unreadable in emails and messengers. A Latin transliterated slug is shorter, more stable and looks the same everywhere.
How do I change the slug of a published page?
Better not to, unless you really must. If you do, set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one and update internal links and the sitemap. Without the redirect, old links will return 404 and the page's accumulated authority will be lost.
Is it free? Where does my text go?
The tool is completely free and runs locally: your text is processed in your browser, never sent anywhere and never stored. No sign-up, no limits.
