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Base64 Converter

Encode text or an image to Base64 and decode Base64 back, with full Unicode support.

Base64 Converter

Encode and decode text or images to Base64 format. Text is handled as UTF-8, so accents and emoji work.

What Base64 Converter does

Base64 represents binary data using only 64 printable characters, so it can travel through systems that expect text: JSON fields, data URLs, email attachments and configuration files.

It is an encoding, not encryption. Anyone who has the string can decode it in seconds, so it protects nothing. Its purpose is transport, not secrecy.

  • Encode and decode text, including emoji and non-Latin scripts
  • Encode an image to a data URL you can paste into CSS or HTML
  • Decode a Base64 image back to a viewable picture
  • Switch to URL-safe Base64 for use in query strings

How to use Base64 Converter

  1. 1

    Choose text or image

    Use the text tab for strings and the image tab for files.

  2. 2

    Provide the input

    Paste your text or Base64 string, or drop an image onto the image tab.

  3. 3

    Encode or decode

    Text can be converted in either direction. Images can be encoded to a data URL and decoded back again.

  4. 4

    Copy the result

    Copy the encoded string, or download the decoded image if you converted one back.

Example

Text with non-ASCII characters

Input

Grüße, Ada 👋

Output

R3LDvMOfZSwgQWRhIPCfkYs=

The text is encoded as UTF-8 first, which is why accented characters and emoji survive the round trip.

Limits and known behaviour

  • Base64 makes data roughly 33% larger. A 1 MB image becomes about 1.37 MB as a data URL, which is why inlining large images slows pages down.
  • It provides no confidentiality whatsoever. Encoding a password or token hides it from a casual glance and from nothing else.
  • Standard Base64 uses + and / characters, which have meaning in URLs. Use the URL-safe option when the value goes into a query string or a path.
  • Decoding only succeeds on well-formed input. Truncated or whitespace-corrupted strings are rejected.
  • Large images produce very long strings that can be slow to render in the browser.

Privacy and data handling

Runs entirely in your browser

  • Your input is processed by JavaScript running in this page. The tool sends no request anywhere, so nothing you paste is transmitted or logged by this site.
  • Images you drop in are read into the page by the browser's file reader and are never uploaded.
  • Nothing is saved between visits. Closing or reloading the tab discards whatever is in the fields.

Site-wide data handling, including analytics and advertising, is described in the privacy policy.

Frequently asked questions

Is Base64 a form of encryption?

No. It is a reversible encoding with no key. Anything encoded is trivially readable by anyone who receives it, so it must never be used to protect a secret.

Why did another tool fail on my emoji?

The browser's built-in Base64 function only accepts Latin-1 characters, so many implementations throw on anything outside it. This tool encodes to UTF-8 bytes first, which handles the full Unicode range.

When should I use URL-safe Base64?

Whenever the value travels in a URL. Standard Base64's + and / characters are interpreted as a space and a path separator respectively, so the value arrives corrupted; the URL-safe alphabet substitutes - and _.