.htaccess Pro

Trace a URL through your Apache .htaccess file, rule by rule, without leaving your JetBrains IDE.

You change a RewriteRule, deploy, and the URL 404s. Or redirects twice. Or loops. The usual way to find out why is to guess, push, and watch a log. .htaccess Pro simulates Apache's mod_rewrite against the file in front of you and shows you the whole path a request takes.

Try the engine first, without installing anything: the .htaccess tester runs the same parser, simulator and validator in your browser. Paste a file and a URL and read the trace. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account.

What it does

Simulates a request. Type a path — /blog/hello-world/ — set the host, query string and HTTPS if they matter, and press Simulate.
Shows every step. Each rule reports whether its pattern matched. Each RewriteCond shows the value it was tested against and whether it passed. The path is shown before and after every rewrite.
Ends with the verdict: served from disk, rewritten internally, redirected with a status code, 403, 410, or a rewrite loop.
Jumps to the source. Double-click any line of the trace to land on that line of the file.
Flags problems as you type. Rules that are inert because RewriteEngine On is missing; orphaned RewriteCond; misspelled flags, with the nearest real flag suggested; patterns that will not compile; an R= code that is not a redirect.
Highlights the file properly — directives, flags, variables, patterns and comments, recognised by filename.

What it does not do

Stated here rather than discovered after you have paid.

Patterns are matched with Java regular expressions. Apache uses PCRE. They agree on ordinary rewrite patterns and differ in some edge cases.
The simulator has no filesystem, so -f, -d, -s and similar tests cannot be evaluated. They appear in the trace as stated assumptions rather than guesses.
Flags outside the modelled set (E=, P, S=, C) are reported rather than silently ignored, and the trace tells you it ran without them.
<IfModule> blocks are read as ordinary lines; the directives inside are simulated.
It does not talk to your server, and it never sends your files anywhere. Everything runs locally inside your IDE.

The engine is open source

The parser, the mod_rewrite simulator and the validator are published under the MIT licence at github.com/theseusbuilds/htaccess-trace, with a command-line version you can run without installing anything:

npx github:theseusbuilds/htaccess-trace .htaccess /blog/hello-world

Those are the same six source files this plugin compiles, not a cut-down copy of them. What the licence pays for is the IDE integration around them — tracing the file open in your editor, jumping from a line of the trace to that line of the file, and findings shown where you are working. If you want to read the rules engine before you trust it with your redirects, read it.

Requirements

Any JetBrains IDE on build 242 or later — IntelliJ IDEA (including Community), PhpStorm, WebStorm, PyCharm, RubyMine, GoLand, Rider, CLion.

Install

In your IDE: Settings → Plugins → ⚙ → Manage Plugin Repositories… → + and add

https://theseusbuilds.pages.dev/htaccess-pro/updatePlugins.xml

Then find .htaccess Pro under the Marketplace tab and install it. Updates arrive through the same channel.

Price

Free while in early access. $19 per user per year once licences go on sale, which will not be before 1 November 2026.

You can install and use the current version today, at no cost and without giving me anything. No account, no email address, no card. Add the repository URL above and it works.

Early access continues, and licences will not go on sale before 1 November 2026. An earlier version of this page named 17 September 2026 as the date. That is no longer true and I would rather say so than let it quietly pass: the licence agreement needs a legal entity behind it, that decision has been deferred, and I am not going to take money before it is settled. Until then there is deliberately no button here that takes money.

The plugin can already validate a licence key offline, and the machinery that turns a payment into a licence key is built and tested — nobody has bought one yet, and when someone does the key is delivered by hand rather than by a robot at 3am. Taking money before the paperwork is settled is how you end up owing refunds to people you cannot serve. When it is settled, this section becomes a Buy button, and this page will say so before anything starts costing money.

When licences do go on sale: one key, any number of your own machines. A key keeps working until it expires; there is no phoning home, no machine binding, and no check that can fail because a server of mine is down. Cancel by not renewing.

If it is useful to you, the thing I want back right now is a bug report or a .htaccess file the simulator gets wrong: hello@theseusbuilds.dev.

Support. Questions, bug reports and refund requests go to hello@theseusbuilds.dev, which reaches the maintainer of the plugin directly.

Refunds

If it does not do what this page says, email within 30 days and you get your money back. No form, no reason required.