URL path prefixes

URL path prefixes allow you to customize the URL structure of your documentation, giving you more control over how your documentation is organized and presented.

Note

This is a Read the Docs for Business feature available on Pro and higher plans. Contact Read the Docs support to enable custom URL path prefixes for your project.

What are URL path prefixes?

By default, Read the Docs serves documentation from the following URL patterns:

Project type	Default URL pattern
Multi-version with translations	`/<language>/<version>/<filename>`
Multi-version without translations	`/<version>/<filename>`
Single version without translations	`/<filename>`
Subproject (multi-version with translations)	`/projects/<subproject-alias>/<language>/<version>/<filename>`
Subproject (multi-version without translations)	`/projects/<subproject-alias>/<version>/<filename>`
Subproject (single version without translations)	`/projects/<subproject-alias>/<filename>`

URL path prefixes let you customize these URL patterns by:

Adding a prefix to your project’s documentation URLs
Changing or removing the /projects/ prefix used for subprojects

Use cases

Here are some common scenarios where custom URL path prefixes are useful:

Proxy documentation behind your main website: If you want to serve your documentation as part of your main website (for example, at https://example.com/docs/), you can configure your web server to proxy requests to Read the Docs and use a custom prefix of /docs/ to match. Your documentation would then be served from https://example.com/docs/en/latest/ instead of https://example.com/en/latest/.
Remove or customize the /projects/ prefix from subproject URLs: By default, subprojects are served from URLs like https://docs.example.com/projects/plugin/en/latest/. You can change this prefix to something shorter or remove it entirely, so your subproject is served from https://docs.example.com/plugin/en/latest/ or https://docs.example.com/libs/plugin/en/latest/.
Organize documentation with meaningful URL paths: You can use prefixes to create a more meaningful URL structure. For example, you could use /api/ for API documentation and /guides/ for user guides.

Getting started

To enable this feature for your project:

Ensure you have a Pro plan or higher subscription.
Contact Read the Docs support with your project name and desired URL structure.
Our support team will configure the custom prefixes for your project.

Tip

When planning your URL structure, consider how it will affect existing links to your documentation. You may need to set up redirects to ensure old URLs continue to work.