URL Encoder / Decoder

How to use URL Encoder / Decoder

1. 1

   Choose encode or decode

   Use the toggle at the top to pick a direction — Encode turns text into a percent-encoded string, Decode turns percent-encoding back into readable text.

2. 2

   Pick an encoder when encoding

   Choose Component to escape every reserved character for a single value, or Full URL to encode a whole address while keeping its structure. Component (encodeURIComponent) is the default.

3. 3

   Type or paste your input

   Drop text (to encode) or a percent-encoded string (to decode) into the box. The result appears instantly below — there’s no button to press.

4. 4

   Copy, download or chain it

   Copy or download the output in a click, or hit “Use result as input” to flip the mode and feed the result straight back in for a quick round-trip check.

Key features

• Live, two-way conversion — encode and decode with a single toggle
• Two encoders: encodeURIComponent (escapes everything) and encodeURI (keeps URL structure)
• Friendly, inline error when decoding malformed percent-encoding
• Full Unicode support — accents, emoji and non-Latin scripts round-trip cleanly
• One-click “use result as input” swap plus live character counts
• One-click copy and download; 100% in-browser, nothing uploaded

Frequently asked questions

What is URL encoding?

URL encoding (also called percent-encoding) replaces characters that aren’t allowed in a URL — or that have a special meaning, like spaces, &, ? and = — with a “%” followed by their hexadecimal byte value. For example a space becomes %20. It lets arbitrary text travel safely inside web addresses and query strings.

What’s the difference between encodeURI and encodeURIComponent?

encodeURIComponent escapes every reserved character, including & = ? / # and :, so it’s the right choice for a single piece of a URL such as one query value or path segment. encodeURI assumes you’re passing a complete URL and deliberately leaves those structural characters unescaped so the address still works. As a rule: use Component for values, Full URL for whole links.

Why does a space become %20 (or sometimes +)?

In percent-encoding a space is represented as %20, which is what this tool produces. The “+” form comes from the older application/x-www-form-urlencoded rules used for HTML form submissions, where “+” means a space inside a query string. Both decode back to a space, but %20 is the more general and widely safe choice.

Why won’t my text decode?

Decoding fails when the input contains a “%” that isn’t followed by two valid hexadecimal digits — for example a lone “%”, “%2” or “%ZZ”. That’s an incomplete or invalid escape sequence. Check for stray percent signs or a truncated value; once the %XX sequences are well-formed it will decode cleanly.

Does it handle emoji and non-English characters?

Yes. Characters are encoded as their UTF-8 bytes, so an accented letter like é becomes %C3%A9 and emoji expand to several %XX bytes. Decoding reassembles those bytes back into the original characters, so any language round-trips perfectly.

Is my data sent to a server?

No. All encoding and decoding happens locally in your browser using the standard built-in functions. Whatever you paste never leaves your device, and the tool keeps working offline once the page has loaded.

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