Find and Replace Text: Free Online Tool
FREE TOOL · NO SIGN-UP
This find and replace text tool swaps every match of a word, phrase or pattern in your text for something else, in one step. You can ignore case, match whole words only, or use regular expressions for advanced edits like reformatting dates or stripping tags. It shows how many replacements were made, so you know the change worked. Use it for bulk edits on articles, lists, templates, CSV data and code snippets, without opening a heavy editor. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded.
How to Use the Find and Replace Text
Three inputs, three options, one result.
Step 1: Enter or paste your input
Paste your text into the Input text box. Then type what you want to change in Find and the new text in Replace with. Leave Replace with empty to delete every match.
Step 2: Choose your options
- Ignore case: matches “SEO”, “Seo” and “seo” alike.
- Whole words only: matches “cat” but not the “cat” inside “category” or “concatenate”.
- Use regular expression: treats the Find box as a regex pattern and lets you use capture groups like
$1in the replacement.
With no options ticked, the search is exact and case-sensitive, and special characters like . or ? are treated as plain text.
Step 3: Copy, download or apply the result
The result updates as you type. A message confirms how many matches were replaced, or warns “No matches found” so you can adjust your search. If a regex pattern is invalid, you see the error instead. Click Copy or Download to save the result. For several different replacements, copy the result back into the input box and run the next one.
How Online Find and Replace Works
Find and replace searches the whole text for every occurrence of a search term and substitutes the replacement in a single pass. It does not stop at the first match, so “colour” becomes “color” everywhere at once.
Behind the scenes, the tool builds a search pattern from your Find text. In normal mode, it escapes any special characters, so searching for $9.99 finds exactly that text. Whole words only adds word boundaries to the start and end of the pattern. Ignore case adds a case-insensitive flag. In regex mode, your pattern is used as written.
The replacement is inserted as plain text in normal mode, so a $ in your replacement appears as a dollar sign. In regex mode, $1, $2 and so on insert captured groups, and $& inserts the whole match.
Because the tool works on plain text, formatting like bold or links is not preserved. If you are editing HTML, the tags are just text, so you can find and replace inside them, which is handy for updating URLs or class names in bulk. Paste rich documents into a plain text editor first if you want to keep formatting.
Case-Sensitive and Whole-Word Matching
These two options prevent the most common find and replace accidents.
| Find | Options | Matches in “Cat category cat scatter” |
|---|---|---|
| cat | None | “cat” in category, cat, “cat” in scatter (3) |
| cat | Ignore case | Cat, category, cat, scatter (4) |
| cat | Whole words only | cat (1) |
| cat | Ignore case + Whole words | Cat, cat (2) |
Case-sensitive matching (the default) is safer for names, codes and brand terms where capitals matter, such as replacing “Apple” the company but not “apple” the fruit.
Ignore case is better for general wording, but the replacement is always inserted exactly as you typed it. Replacing “colour” with “color” while ignoring case turns “Colour” at the start of a sentence into “color”. Run a separate case-sensitive pass for capitalized versions if that matters.
Whole words only uses word boundaries, which work on English letters, digits and underscores. Words containing accented letters may not match as whole words. For those, use regex with spaces or punctuation around the word.
Using Regex for Advanced Replacements
Regular expressions let you match patterns instead of fixed text. This tool uses JavaScript regex syntax with the Unicode flag. Some useful patterns:
| Task | Find | Replace with |
|---|---|---|
| Collapse multiple spaces | {2,} | single space |
| Remove HTML tags | <[^>]+> | (empty) |
| Swap “Last, First” to “First Last” | (\w+), (\w+) | $2 $1 |
| Change dates 2026-10-27 to 27/10/2026 | (\d{4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2}) | $3/$2/$1 |
| Remove trailing spaces on each line | +$ (with multiline) | (empty) |
| Add quotes around each word | (\w+) | "$1" |
Notes:
^and$match the start and end of the whole text, not each line, because the multiline flag is not set. To work line by line, match the line break itself with\n.- To find a literal special character in regex mode, escape it, like
\.or\?. - Test on a small sample first. A broad pattern like
.*can replace far more than you intended.
Bulk Edits Across Lists and Templates
Find and replace shines on repetitive edits:
- Templates. Replace placeholders like
{city}or[PRODUCT]with real values to create variations of an email, ad or page. - URL updates. Change
http://tohttps://or an old domain to a new one across a list of links or a block of HTML. - Keyword lists. Swap a word across hundreds of keywords, such as “cheap” to “affordable”. Then use the Duplicate Line Remover if the change created duplicates.
- CSV and data. Change delimiters, fix a misspelled category, or normalize “N/A” to empty.
- Line formatting. Replace
\nwith,in regex mode to join lines, or use the Comma Separator for lists.
For several different replacements, run them one after another by pasting each result back into the input. Keep a note of the order, since one replacement can affect the next.
Key Features of Our Find and Replace Text
- Free with no signup.
- Replace all matches in one pass.
- Ignore case and whole words only options.
- Regular expression support with capture groups.
- Match count and clear “no matches” or error messages.
- Delete matches by leaving the replacement empty.
- Copy and Download; runs in your browser.
Who Needs Bulk Text Replacement
- Writers and editors fixing repeated spelling or style changes.
- SEOs updating keywords, URLs and anchor text in bulk.
- Developers editing snippets, config values and HTML without an IDE.
- Marketers personalizing templates for cities, products or clients.
- Data analysts cleaning exported text and CSV values.
Pro Tips and Mistakes to Avoid
Checklist of best practices
- Keep a copy of the original text.
- Check the match count before using the result.
- Use whole words for short terms.
- Test regex on a small sample first.
- Run case-sensitive passes for capitalized words.
Common mistakes and quick fixes
- Replaced parts of other words. Turn on Whole words only.
- “No matches found.” Check capitals, extra spaces or non-breaking spaces. Clean the text with the Extra Spaces Remover first.
- Regex error. Unbalanced brackets or a stray backslash. Escape special characters.
- Dollar signs vanished in regex mode.
$has special meaning in replacements. Use$$for a literal dollar sign.
Edit Large Text Without the Tedium
Paste your text above and make every change in one go. Clean up spacing with the Extra Spaces Remover, compare before and after with Text Compare, and add text to every line with the Add Prefix / Suffix to Lines tool. Browse all free tools in the FHSEO Hub tools directory.