About URL Extractor

Extract every unique http/https URL from a blob of text. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the Text / String collection.

Use Cases

• Researchers collecting all referenced URLs from academic papers or articles
• QA testers extracting API endpoint URLs from documentation for testing
• Content managers auditing links in page copy before publication
• Developers parsing URLs from log files or configuration dumps

Tips

• Paste any text blob to pull out all unique http and https URLs
• Results are deduplicated even if the same URL appears multiple times
• Use it on documentation or chat logs to collect all referenced links

Fun Facts

• Tim Berners-Lee invented URLs (originally called URIs) in 1994, defining the format in RFC 1738. The maximum practical URL length is about 2,000 characters due to browser limits.
• The longest valid URL ever tested in production was over 100,000 characters in Apache — though no browser would display it, the HTTP spec technically has no maximum length.
• The most visited URL in history is google.com, which receives over 8.5 billion visits per day. The first ever URL was info.cern.ch, created by Berners-Lee in 1991.

FAQ

What URL schemes does it catch?

http, https, and ftp by default. Toggle to include file://, mailto:, tel:, and custom schemes (data:, javascript:). The output is deduplicated.

Does it handle bare domains without http://?

Optional. Default requires the scheme for unambiguous detection. Toggle 'loose mode' to match `example.com` and `www.example.com` too — useful when scraping informal text.

What about URL parameters?

Preserved fully. Query strings and hash fragments count as part of the URL and stay attached in the output.

Can I filter by domain?

Yes — toggle 'only from these domains' and paste a list. Useful for extracting only your company's links from a customer-support transcript.