Updated · Built and checked by the PlinzoTools team, formulas tested against published sources
Check whether a URL is well-formed and see its parsed components.
Enter a URL to validate its format.
This tool checks whether a URL is well-formed using the browser's own built-in, spec-compliant URL parser -- the same parser your browser uses internally -- and shows the parsed protocol and hostname on success.
Enter a URL. The result shows whether it's valid, and if so, its protocol and hostname.
The URL is passed to JavaScript's native URL constructor, which throws an error for malformed input. This tool additionally treats any protocol other than http, https, or ftp as invalid, since those are overwhelmingly the protocols real-world links use.
To validate a domain name specifically (without the full URL), see the Domain Name Validator.
When a URL passes, the tool shows two values from the parsed result: the protocol (such as https:) and the hostname. It does not display the path, query string or fragment, though they are parsed internally. Leading and trailing spaces are trimmed before parsing. Note that the hostname is normalised by the parser, so an uppercase domain like HTTPS://EXAMPLE.COM/Page is reported with a lowercase hostname and lowercase scheme.
The tool builds the URL without a base address, so relative references such as /about, ../images/logo.png or ?page=2 always fail. That is correct behaviour for a validator of complete links, for example an href you plan to store in a database or a link in an XML sitemap, where the full absolute form is what you want. If you are checking a relative link inside a page, add the site origin in front of it first and validate the combined string.
The hostname field is a quick way to extract just the domain from a long link, for instance when you are sorting a list of links by site. It excludes the port, credentials and path. If a URL contains a port like :8080, the port is not part of the hostname shown. If the hostname looks different than you expected, that is often a sign of a pasted-in typo, such as a missing slash, or of a link that includes user info before an at sign, which can be used to disguise the true destination.
No -- this checks format only; the page or resource at that URL might not exist, might be offline, or might require authentication -- checking reachability would need an actual network request.
It's a hard result, not a soft warning -- protocols like mailto: or tel: are technically valid URLs but aren't typical web links, so the tool returns them as invalid with an "unusual protocol" reason instead of accepting them like http/https.
No -- format validity says nothing about whether a URL leads to malicious content; use a dedicated security/reputation service for that kind of check.
The URL parser requires a scheme. Add https:// to the front and the same text will validate.
No. Relative references have no scheme or host, so they fail. Prepend the full site address, then validate the complete link.
No, it only shows the protocol and hostname. The path and query are parsed but are not displayed in the result.
Yes, as long as the rest is well formed. The port is accepted but not included in the displayed hostname.
Reference: MDN Web Docs