diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 3952e86ac..af7da1d25 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -147,6 +147,8 @@ both UIs integration are available from https://github.com/meztez/rapidoc/ and h
 
 ### Bug fixes
 
+* Paths that are missing a leading `/` have a `/` prepended to the path location. (#656)
+
 * Handle plus signs in URI as space characters instead of actual plus signs (@meztez, #618)
 
 * Modified images serialization to use content-type serializer. Fixes issue with images pre/postserialize hooks (@meztez, #518).
diff --git a/R/plumber-step.R b/R/plumber-step.R
index 015e67fac..71599c646 100644
--- a/R/plumber-step.R
+++ b/R/plumber-step.R
@@ -223,6 +223,11 @@ PlumberEndpoint <- R6Class(
     #' They can also be provided manually for historical reasons.
     #' @return A new `PlumberEndpoint` object
     initialize = function(verbs, path, expr, envir, serializer, parsers, lines, params, comments, responses, tags) {
+
+      if (substr(path, 1,1) != "/") {
+        path <- paste0("/", path)
+      }
+
       self$verbs <- verbs
       self$path <- path
 
diff --git a/tests/testthat/test-plumber.R b/tests/testthat/test-plumber.R
index d358abde3..4e3852194 100644
--- a/tests/testthat/test-plumber.R
+++ b/tests/testthat/test-plumber.R
@@ -509,3 +509,12 @@ test_that("removeHandle works", {
   expect_equal(length(pr$endpoints[[1]]), 1L)
   expect_equal(pr$endpoints[[1]][[1]]$path, "/path2")
 })
+
+
+test_that("routes that don't start with a slash are prepended with a slash", {
+  pr <- pr()
+  pr$handle("GET", "nested/path/here", function(){})
+
+  expect_equal(length(pr$endpoints[[1]]), 1L)
+  expect_equal(pr$endpoints[[1]][[1]]$path, "/nested/path/here")
+})