A SKU (stock keeping unit) is a short code you assign to one product, or to one variation of a product, so you can identify and count it wherever it appears - your shelves, your listings, your purchase orders, your reports. The format is yours to invent; it only has to make sense inside your own business.

The 3Dsellers SKU Generator is a free online tool that builds those codes for you. Name the product details you care about - Item Name, Brand, Category, anything you like - type a value into each, and it abbreviates every value and joins the pieces into a finished SKU. It updates on every keystroke, multiplies a comma-separated list of variations into one SKU per combination, and lets you copy the whole set or download it as a CSV file. It runs in your browser and needs no 3Dsellers account.

Watch the short walkthrough, then use the sections below as a reference:

In this article:

The 3Dsellers SKU Generator is a SKU formatter: it takes the product details you type, shortens each one by a rule you control, and joins them together. Because the rule is fixed, the same details always produce the same SKU.

What it does:

Two boundaries to know before you start, with the rest in Limits: it adds no counter or random suffix, so it will not make a SKU unique for you or warn you about a duplicate; and it saves nothing and connects to nothing, so you copy or export the SKUs and import them wherever your stock lives.

The 3Dsellers SKU Generator lives on the 3Dsellers website under Free Tools, at www.3dsellers.com/free-tools/sku-generator. Nothing is gated and there is no sign-in.

Before you type anything the tool looks like this. The left column (1) is where you describe the product; the right column (2) shows the placeholder Add details about the item (and variations) to generate SKUs instantly. One Item Name field is already there, and Variations reads Add Item Details to enable variations until that field has a value:

Fill in one detail per attribute you want inside the code. This example uses three - product name, brand and category - and every SKU quoted is the one the tool produced.

Three details are now feeding the SKU. Item Name (1), Brand (2) and Category (3) each contribute three characters, and the SKU column (4) reads Nik-Nik-Sho:

The 3Dsellers SKU Generator applies the same five steps to every field, in this order:

Fields are consumed top to bottom - all of your Item Details first, then your Variations. The worked example, segment by segment, at the defaults (Max: 3, separator -, Normal Case, Remove Vowels off):

The result is the variation SKU Nik-Nik-Sho-Bla-10, plus a parent SKU of Nik-Nik-Sho built from the three item details alone.

The cut is a plain first-N-characters cut, not initials. Nike Air Max 90 gives Nik at Max: 3, Nike at 4, NikeA at 5 and NikeAirMax at 10 - it never becomes NAM.

Every field in the 3Dsellers SKU Generator carries the same controls. Below is the Item Name field: the separator dropdown (1), the Max dropdown (2), the + LABEL tick box (3), and the ☒ outlined at the top right, which deletes the field.

The Assimilate Text section at the bottom of the left column holds four switches that apply to every field in the 3Dsellers SKU Generator at once: the Remove Vowels tick box, plus one choice between All Capital, All Lowercase and Normal Case, which is selected at load.

Below, Remove Vowels and All Capital are both on:

On the worked example those two switches give NKR-NK-SHS and NKR-NK-SHS-BLC-10:

A Variation in the 3Dsellers SKU Generator works like an Item Detail with one difference: its value can be a comma-separated list, and the tool multiplies those lists together - two variation fields holding 4 and 20 values produce 80 SKUs plus one parent row.

The Add Variation menu holds 34 entries: Custom ~ at the top, then 33 presets grouped under Size, Shoe Size, Pants, Color, Electronics, PC Components and Tools. The values a preset will insert are printed after the ~ in the menu, so you can read them before you click:

With Color set to Black and Size to 10, the table has two data rows: the parent - item details only, no variation, the SKU for the product as a whole - and the variation SKU:

The parent row is deliberately short: it fills the SKU and item-detail columns and leaves the variation columns empty, which is why it also has fewer fields than the header in the CSV. Spreadsheets open that without complaint; a strict CSV parser may object.

As many as your lists multiply out to. The Color ~ black,white,blue,yellow preset (4 values) with the Shoe Size (Men US) preset (20 values) produced 80 combinations plus one parent row, and all 81 SKUs went to the clipboard as one 1,543-character line. Below is the top of that run: the header (outlined) picks up a Shoe Size (Men US) column, with the parent Nik-Nik-Sho above the combinations.

The button bar under the results table appears as soon as your first detail has a value. Copy SKUs (1) puts every SKU on your clipboard; Export CSV (2) downloads the whole table. Below, Copy SKUs has just been clicked, which is why it reads Copied!:

The file is named Export_SKU_Gen_3Dsellers-<year>_<month>_<day>-<hour>_<minute>.csv, for example Export_SKU_Gen_3Dsellers-2026_9_10-9_24.csv. Its columns follow the results table exactly - SKU, one per Item Detail, Variation, then one per Variation - and every value is double-quoted. The worked example exports as:

Lock, Unlock and Delete appear in the button bar as soon as you tick a row's checkbox - as does Export Selected, which is in How do I copy my SKUs or export them to a CSV file?. All of them act on the ticked rows. In the 3Dsellers SKU Generator:

The SKU Generator page carries its own guidance in its FAQ, and it matches how the tool is built - a workable format follows four rules:

The 3Dsellers SKU Generator is a free formatting tool, not an inventory system. It will not:

There is no Generate button, by design: the table is built on every keystroke. If the right column still reads Add details about the item (and variations) to generate SKUs instantly, no field has a value yet. Type into Item Name and the table, Copy SKUs and Export CSV appear together; deleting every field hides them again.

That is the SKU Generator sanitising the field as you type: detail boxes silently drop punctuation - dashes, underscores, slashes, ampersands, colons, quotes and brackets among them - and keep letters, digits, spaces, full stops and accented characters, so Nike-Air_Max/90 & 10.5 leaves NikeAirMax90 10.5 in the box. Do not type separators into the value; choose them from the field's separator dropdown. Variation boxes keep commas, because commas separate the variation values.

A space in a SKU produced by the SKU Generator comes from + LABEL: the label text is inserted exactly as written, with no space removal and no character limit, so a field still labelled Item Name produces Item Name-Nik-Nik-Sho. Untick + LABEL, or rename the label to a short single word first.

Check the separator dropdowns first. If any field is set to /, : or ., every recalculation fails: the clipboard keeps the values from before your last edit while the table shows a SKU with a separator dangling on the end. Set every separator back to -, # or No Separator, make one more edit so the table recalculates, then copy again.

You have picked one of the empty variation presets. Every Electronics and PC Components entry, most of Tools, and Pant Size (Women) ~ carry no values, and clicking one adds a field whose value is the menu text - hence the extra column and the junk segment such as -iPh. Remove that field with its ☒, then use Custom ~ and type the values yourself.

Reload the page. The ☒ on the first field removes it like any other, and + Add Detail only returns a field labelled New Detail. Because the SKU Generator saves nothing, reloading costs you only the values you had typed - and it is the only way to clear the tool completely, since there is no Reset button.

Yes - the 3Dsellers SKU Generator is completely free, with no account, no sign-in, no card and nothing to install. It runs in your browser, as one of the 3Dsellers free selling tools.

A SKU is a stock keeping unit: a short code you assign yourself to one product or variation, so you can identify and count it across your stock, listings and reports. A UPC or EAN is a standard retail barcode of fixed length, issued so any retailer can scan the same product. Your SKUs are internal, follow whatever format you choose, and are usually set per variation.

No - the 3Dsellers SKU Generator adds no counter, no sequence number, no date and no random suffix. It is deterministic: the same details always produce the same SKU, so you can regenerate a code at any time and get the same answer - but uniqueness is your responsibility. If two products collide, raise a field's Max, add another Item Detail, or change one of the values.

Add a Variation for each axis and give it a comma-separated list - a preset that shows values after the ~, or Custom ~ and your own list. The SKU Generator multiplies the lists into one SKU per combination plus a parent SKU from the item details only: a 4-value colour preset with a 20-value shoe-size preset produced 80 combinations plus that parent row.

Use -, # or No Separator - all three recalculate cleanly. Do not use /, : or .: each of those makes every recalculation fail, leaves a separator dangling on the end of the SKU, and leaves Copy SKUs and Export CSV serving the values from before your last edit.

Because Delete in the SKU Generator removes the row visually only: the Copy SKUs text and the Export CSV file are unchanged, and the row returns at the next recalculation. To exclude a value, edit or remove the field that produces it; to export part of the table, tick those rows and use Export Selected.