Yes, lightning addresses are built on top of LNURL. Lightning addresses are a user-friendly way to request invoices, instead of lnurl followed by a long incomprehensible string.

Reading [this](https://www.voltage.cloud/blog/how-does-lnurl-work-enhancing-lightnings-user-experience) should help you understand: 

> **Paying to static internet identifiers**
>
> With LNURL Pay, developers went a step further and proposed a method of paying to an email-like address, like satoshi@voltage.com. Instead of making a request for an URL encoded in an invoice, the wallet makes a request to voltage.com/.well-known/lnurlp/satoshi. The server then responds with the same information and instructions defined in LNURL Pay request spec and the flow continues as this was just a regular LNURL Pay request. In essence, the only thing that changed is the initial URL.

bitcoin_beginners

Is a Lightning URL Like an Email Address?

spiderman

But I also read some examples of a lightning url which are lnurl followed by a long incomprehensible string, not a neat email address like thing as my example above. 

Are these two similar? Or am I mixing up lightning url with lightning address? Which one to use for payment? Any tutorial describing the difference between these? 