Skip to content

URL Encoder

Percent-encode text for safe use in a URL, and decode percent-encoded strings back to readable text.

URL Encoder/Decoder

Encode text to URL-safe format or decode URLs.

What URL Encoder does

URLs may only contain a limited set of characters. Anything else — spaces, ampersands, question marks, accented letters, emoji — has to be percent-encoded, or the address is cut short or misread at the first special character.

This tool applies the standard component encoding, which is the one you want when you are building a query-string value or a path segment out of arbitrary text.

  • Encode text to percent-encoded form
  • Decode percent-encoded text back to plain text
  • Handle Unicode via UTF-8, so non-Latin scripts round-trip correctly

How to use URL Encoder

  1. 1

    Paste the text

    Paste the single value you want to encode, not the whole URL — encoding a whole URL would escape its slashes and colons too.

  2. 2

    Encode or decode

    Choose the direction you need.

  3. 3

    Copy the result

    Insert the encoded value into your URL, or read the decoded text.

Example

A search term with reserved characters

Input

coffee & cake?

Output

coffee%20%26%20cake%3F

Without encoding, the & would start a new query parameter and the ? would be read as the start of the query string.

Limits and known behaviour

  • This encodes a component, so reserved characters such as / : ? # & are escaped. Do not run a complete URL through it or the structure will be escaped along with the content.
  • Some servers expect a space in form data as +, not %20. Both decode to a space, but only in the form-encoding convention.
  • Decoding a malformed sequence, such as a lone % that is not followed by two hex digits, fails and is reported as an error.

Privacy and data handling

Runs entirely in your browser

  • Everything you type is processed by JavaScript in this page; no request carries it anywhere.
  • Nothing is stored between visits.

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

Frequently asked questions

Why is my whole URL mangled after encoding?

Because component encoding escapes the characters that give a URL its structure. Encode only the value going into a parameter, then assemble the URL around it.

What is the difference between %20 and +?

Both represent a space. %20 is standard percent-encoding and works anywhere in a URL; + means a space only inside form-encoded query data, and is a literal plus sign elsewhere.