30 Useful Regular Expressions Tools and Resources

By Hongkiat Lim. in Toolkit. Updated on April 15, 2020.

Regular expression, or often known as regex, is a pattern that consist of rules used to match a certain set of strings. They are extremely powerful, and you’ll need them in most programming languages you come across, especially when there’s a need to scan and match context for further actions.

Here’s a simple example of regular expression – to match all string consist of "regular expression", "regular expressions", "regex", and "regexp" in a content, this is your regular expression pattern – reg(ular expression?|ex(p|es)?)

Now, they might seem a little bit confusing or hard to pick up at first, but once you understand the syntax, you’ll notice it’s pretty simple and definitely very useful for future coding projects. Learning and using Regular Expressions don’t have to be torturous process.

Here’s a list of useful regular expression tools and resources to make your life easier.

Beginner’s Guide to Regular Expression (Regex)

A regular expression is a set of characters forming a pattern that can be searched in a string.... Read more

Desktop Regex Tools

regexTools

A simple and straightforward RegEx application for macOS to write and test the RegEx matches.

Platform: macOS
Price: Free

Patterns

A quite comprehensive app for macOS for writing and testing RegEx. It features real-time syntax highlighting for the RegEx pattern and the matches. It also supports many flavour of RegEx inclding Perl (PCRE), Ruby, bash, grep, and sed. A great app for both beginners and advanced users.

Platform: macOS
Price: $2.99

RegEx Marker

This app allows you to automate code editing in XCode with RegEx. With this you can write an expression whether add a new line, replace or remove it. It’s compatible with XCode 10 and 9 on macOS Mojave or High Sierra.

Platform: macOS
Price: $4.99

Expresso

Expresso is an award winning regex editor suitable for regular expression beginners; it also has a full-featured development environment for programmers and web designers.

Platform: Windows
Price: Free

Reggy

An open-source app aims to be a simple functional app with a nice looking UI for macOS. It supports several RegEx flavours including Perl, Ruby, and Java.

Platform: macOS
Price: Free

Regex Coach

Graphical application for Windows which can be used to experiment with (Perl-compatible) regular expressions interactively.

Platform: Windows
Price: Free

Regex Widget

Interactive widget for trying out regular expressions for JavaScript, and other languages (such as Sed, Ruby, or Perl).

Platform:macOS
Price: Free

Regex magic

Generates complete regular expressions to your specifications without the need to deal with regular expression syntax.

Platform: Windows
Price: $39.95

RegexPixie

A quite feature-filled tool to work with RegEx on Windows. It offers real-time syntax hihglighting, search replace the RegEx matches, and support for “named group” in RegEx.

Platform: Windows
Price: Free

Regex Regular Expression Tool

Another handy tool for Windows to write and test RegEx pattern. It works quite straightforward. It feautres 3 input where you can add the text source to test, another input to write the RegEx pattern, and the other input will show the RegEx matches in real-time.

Platform: Windows
Price: Free

Expressions

An application for macOS to play with RegEx. It features a beautiful minimalistic UI as well as supports for the macOS Dark Mode.

Platform: macOS
Price: USD7.99

Rex-T

Allows you to develop and test a complex RegEx patterns easily and save them for later use. It can also generate a sample code based on the pattern to use in Swift or Objective-C code.

Platform: macOS
Price: USD1.99

Online Regex Tools

RegExr

Created by gskinner, this is one of the best online regular expression tool we’ve seen so far. It is community driven with useful examples of regex syntax. Supports match and replace.

Regular Expression 101

One of the most popular and full-featured RegEx online tools. Aside of the input to test the .

Rubular

Ruby-based regular expression editor. Handy and simple way to test your regular expressions on the web.

RegexTester

This service uses PHP regular expression functions as a base for its operations. It can be useful for programmers of other languages as well.

Rex V

Ajax based regular expression evaluator for three different regular expression systems PHP PCRE, PHP Posix and Javascript.

Python Regular Expression Testing Tool

One of the web based python regular expression tool for rapidly testing regular expressions. Includes support for python regex specific functions such as dotall and unicode.

I Hate RegEx

A collection of commonly used RegEx expression like those to match a username, email, phone number with explanation on what each expression match for. A time saver and a great source to learn RegEx.

PHPLiveRegEx

A handy tool to write RegEx pattern and test with PHP function like preg_match, preg_match_all, and preg_replace right from the browser.

Build RegEx

Compose RegEx expression conveniently with UI. You can just click, select the condition, and drag-n-drop to rearrange the position of the syntax.

Regulex

A tool that allows you to visualize RegEx pattern for JavaScript. A handy tool if you’re about to write a tutorial, a book, or presentation.

More Resources on Regex:

Using Regular Expressions – Regular expression in a nutshell.
Regular Expression Basics
Regular Expression Basic Syntax Reference
Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet – Quick reference guide for regular expressions, including symbols, ranges, grouping, assertions and some sample patterns to get you started.
RegExLib cheatsheet – For .NET framework.
.NET Framework Regular Expressions
Regular Expression Examples – Example patterns that you can use for and adapt to your own purposes.
How to Use and Get The Most out of Regular Expressions
8 Regular Expressions You Should Know

We are probably just scratching the surfaces of useful Regular Expression tools. If you think we’ve missed a good piece regex article or tools , please leave a comment below. Thanks!