Sort Lines
Sort any list of lines 8 ways — A→Z, Z→A, numerical, by length, reverse, or random shuffle. Optional deduplication, whitespace trim, and empty-line removal all in one pass.
Sort mode
(empty)
Use this with
Related cleanup & transforms tools
Line Sorting Guide
Eight ways to order any list
Sorting is a small task you do constantly in SEO work — cleaning keyword exports, ordering URLs, prioritizing internal link anchors. This tool gives you eight sort modes in a single paste, with all the cleanup options you need in one pass.
Alphabetical A→Z and Z→A
The default for keyword lists, email lists, domain lists, or anything where you want consistent lookup order. Case-insensitive by default; toggle if case matters for your use case.
Numerical sort
Extracts the first number in each line and sorts by that — useful for lines like "Page 1 — Home", "Page 10 — Pricing". Plain alphabetical sorting puts "10" before "2"; numerical sort does it correctly.
Sort by length
Short → long or long → short. Useful for spotting outliers — e.g., finding suspiciously long keywords in a list, or finding the shortest URL variants to canonicalize toward.
Reverse
Flips whatever order the lines are already in — useful for time-ordered exports where you want newest first instead of oldest first.
Shuffle
Random order via Fisher-Yates. Good for A/B test variant ordering, randomized content rotation lists, or any time you want to kill ordering bias.
Combine with cleanup
All options apply in a single pass: sort + dedupe + trim + empty-line removal. No need to run three tools in sequence — paste once, check the boxes, copy the result.
Pro Tips
Numerical mode reads the FIRST number in each line. 'Chapter 2 — Year 2024' sorts by 2, not 2024. If that's wrong for your data, consider numbering lines consistently first.
Checking 'unique only' plus any alphabetical sort gives you the classic shell `sort | uniq` result — clean, deduplicated, ordered. Essential for merging keyword lists.
Turn ON "case sensitive" if you want ABC before abc. Leave it OFF (default) for natural-looking alphabetical order where case is ignored for comparison.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Does sorting preserve blank lines?
- Only if you turn OFF 'remove empty lines'. When on (default), blanks are stripped before sorting — usually what you want for clean output.
- How does numerical sort work with non-numeric lines?
- Lines with no numbers are treated as infinity, so they sort last (or first when descending). Useful for surfacing "uncategorized" entries at one end.
- Can I sort by a specific column or field?
- Not directly — this is a line sorter, not a CSV sorter. If you have CSV data, extract the column you want to sort by, or consider splitting the file into separate columns first with our Find & Replace tool.
- Is shuffle truly random?
- It uses Math.random() via Fisher-Yates, which is a solid uniform shuffle but not cryptographically secure. For high-stakes randomness (e.g., lotteries), don't use this tool.