Meta Refresh Redirect Generator

A meta refresh redirect is a line of HTML placed in a page's head section, <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=https://destination.com">, that tells the browser to load a different URL after a set number of seconds. With a delay of 0 it redirects immediately. Because it lives inside an ordinary HTML file, it works on any host that can serve static files, with no server configuration, .htaccess, or backend code required.

Use a meta refresh when you cannot set a real server-side 301, which is common on static hosts like GitHub Pages, Amazon S3, Netlify static deploys, Cloudflare Pages, Notion-hosted pages, and many shared hosts. If you do control the server, a 301 is better for SEO and speed. This generator is the fallback for the very common situation where all you can publish is an HTML file. The snippet it builds also includes a canonical tag and a visible link so it behaves as well as a client-side redirect can.

An instant meta refresh (delay 0) to a single fixed destination is treated by Google much like a 301 and passes most ranking signal, but it is still second best to a real server 301 because the browser has to download the intermediate page first. A delayed meta refresh (more than 0 seconds) is NOT a clean redirect signal and can look manipulative, so use delay 0 for genuine redirects. This tool adds a rel=canonical pointing at the destination, which reinforces to search engines which URL is authoritative.

Belt and suspenders. The meta refresh handles browsers and crawlers that honor it, and the small window.location.replace script catches the rare cases where meta refresh is disabled or slow. Using location.replace (rather than location.href) means the redirect page does not get added to the browser history, so the back button takes the visitor to where they came from instead of bouncing them back into the redirect. Both methods point to the same destination, so they never conflict.

The rel=canonical link tag tells search engines that the real, authoritative version of this content lives at the destination URL. On a redirect page that is exactly the message you want to send: do not index this stub, credit the destination. It is a safety net that helps consolidate ranking signals on the right URL even if a crawler indexes the redirect file before following it.

Yes, you can set the delay in seconds. A delay is useful for a courtesy "you are being redirected, click here if it does not happen" page, which some teams use for legal or UX reasons. For pure SEO redirects, keep the delay at 0 so search engines treat it as a direct redirect. The generated page always includes a visible fallback link so visitors are never stranded if the automatic redirect fails.

Copy the snippet, save it as an index.html file (or any filename you like), and upload it to the path you want to redirect from. For example, to redirect yoursite.com/old-page, put the file at /old-page/index.html in your static host. When someone visits that path, the host serves your HTML file, which immediately forwards them to the destination. You can download the file directly from the tool too.

Yes, this is one of the most common uses. GitHub Pages serves static files and offers no server-side redirect configuration, so a meta refresh HTML file is the standard way to redirect an old path to a new URL or an external site. Commit the generated index.html at the path you want to redirect from and GitHub Pages serves it. The same approach works on GitLab Pages, Cloudflare Pages, and S3 static website hosting.

With delay 0 it is effectively instant: the browser loads your tiny HTML file (a few hundred bytes) and immediately navigates to the destination, usually faster than the eye can follow. It is marginally slower than a true server 301 because there is one extra round trip to fetch the HTML stub, but on a static host where a 301 is not available, it is the fastest option you have.

No. The entire snippet is built in your browser with client-side JavaScript. Nothing you type is sent to or stored on our servers, so you can safely generate redirects for private or unreleased URLs. The optional history feature keeps your recent destinations in your browser localStorage only, and you can clear it any time.

Yes. The destination can be any valid URL, including a different domain. This is handy when you are sunsetting a site and want every old path to forward to a new domain, or when you are pointing a static landing page at a campaign URL. Because it is a client-side redirect, cross-domain works without any CORS or server configuration.

A meta refresh page is a static file you host and maintain yourself, with no analytics and no way to change the destination without editing and re-uploading the file. A Flyn short link is a managed 301 redirect with real-time click analytics, an editable destination you can change without touching anything you have shared, branded domains, and QR codes. Use this generator when you specifically need a self-hosted HTML file; use Flyn when you want a trackable, editable link.

location.href adds the redirect page to the browser history, so after the redirect a visitor who hits the back button lands back on the redirect stub, which immediately forwards them again, trapping them. location.replace swaps the current history entry instead of adding one, so the back button skips the stub entirely and returns the visitor to wherever they came from. It is the correct choice for any redirect page, and this generator uses it by default.