Is the Anchor Link Builder free?
Yes. The Anchor Link Builder is free with no signup or install, and it runs entirely in your browser.
Does it upload my URLs anywhere?
No. The slugifying and link assembly run locally in your browser, so the base URL and heading text never leave your device.
Does it generate HTML or Markdown snippets too?
No. This tool focuses on producing the final anchored URL only, so you get a clean copy-ready link rather than markup.
Will it replace an existing hash in the base URL?
Yes. If the base URL already contains a hash, the generated fragment replaces it so the output URL ends with a single clean anchor.
What characters does the anchor support?
Heading text is slugified into a lowercase, hyphenated, URL-safe fragment, stripping spaces and unsafe characters so the link works reliably in browsers.
Why did my heading with Russian or Chinese text fail to generate an anchor?
The slugifier strips everything outside a-z and 0-9, so a heading with no Latin characters reduces to an empty string and the tool stops rather than returning a link to nowhere. Renderers that support non-Latin anchors, including GitHub, use percent-encoded fragments. Copy the anchor from the rendered page instead.
Will the generated anchor match the one GitHub creates for the same heading?
Often, but not always. GitHub lowercases and hyphenates in a similar way, but it keeps underscores and handles duplicate headings by appending -1, -2, and so on. This tool converts underscores to hyphens and has no way of knowing a heading is duplicated. Verify against the real page before publishing the link.
Does it check that the anchor actually exists on the page?
No. No request is made to the destination. A fragment is resolved by the browser after the page loads, so an anchor that matches no element leaves the reader at the top of the page. This is the failure mode to watch for, because it looks like a working link.
What happens to the ampersand and the quotes in my heading?
Ampersands and other punctuation collapse into a single hyphen, and straight or curly quotes and apostrophes are deleted with no hyphen in their place. So 'Pricing & plans' becomes pricing-plans and 'What's new' becomes whats-new, which is what most Markdown renderers also do.
Is the URL sent anywhere?
No. The base URL is parsed and the fragment is slugified in the browser. The tool works offline once the page is loaded.
Can I use it for a URL that already has query parameters?
Yes. The query string is left intact and the fragment is set or replaced on the end, which is the correct order: parameters come before the hash. A UTM-tagged link with an anchor stays valid.