regex101
Online regex tester and debugger with live highlighting and explanations across several flavours.
why this verdict
Cancel it — switch to ChatGPT
ChatGPT and RegExr now cover the same core job, so there is little reason to run a second tool for it.
- A named launch, not a vibe named, unlinked
- ChatGPT writing and explaining a working regex from a plain-English description. OpenAI, March 14, 2023 — no announcement link recorded yet.
- How much of the job it covers all of it editorial call
- The whole core job — the thing the subscription was actually for.
- Is there a free way to do it? yes
- 3 of 3 listed replacements have a usable free tier: ChatGPT, RegExr and Debuggex.
- What the call is worth nothing to cancel
- No paid entry tier tracked, so there is no subscription to cancel.
- Threatened by
- OpenAI
- Since
- March 14, 2023
- List price
- free
- Per year
- —
The backstory
regex101 let you paste a pattern and a test string and see exactly which groups matched, with a breakdown of every token. It existed because regular expressions are hard to write and harder to read. ChatGPT will now produce a correct pattern from a sentence, explain each part and hand back test cases, all in one message. The site is still a lovely reference, but the reason people opened it ten times a week has gone.
Escape hatches
Writes, explains and tests patterns from a description
openai.com open_in_newFree browser regex tester with a community pattern library
regexr.com open_in_newVisualises a regular expression as a railway diagram
debuggex.com open_in_new3 of 3 replacements have a usable free tier.
