URL Validator

How to use the url validator

1. Paste the URL.
2. Read the checks and any warnings.
3. Review the parsed components below.

About this tool

Validation is done with the browser's own URL parser, which implements the WHATWG standard — the same code the address bar uses. That is the important detail: hand-written regular expressions for URLs disagree with real browsers in exactly the edge cases where it matters, so this validates against the thing that will actually load the address.

A bare verdict is not useful, so each check is reported separately: whether it parses, which scheme it uses, and whether the pieces look reasonable. By far the most common failure is a missing scheme — example.com is not a URL, https://example.com is — and that is called out specifically rather than lumped in with everything else.

Warnings are advisory rather than errors. Non-ASCII characters in a hostname are perfectly legal, but they are also how lookalike domains are built, so it is worth knowing they are there.

Common uses

• Working out why a URL is being rejected.
• Checking a URL from an email before trusting it.
• Seeing how a browser will normalise an address.

Frequently asked questions

Does this check whether the page exists?

No. It validates the format only and never visits the address, so it cannot tell you whether the site resolves, responds or is safe.

Why is example.com invalid?

It has no scheme. A URL needs one, such as https://. Browsers add it silently in the address bar, which is why it looks valid there.

What does the non-ASCII warning mean?

The URL contains characters outside the plain ASCII set. That is legal and often innocent, but it is also how lookalike domains impersonate real ones, so it is worth a check.