URL Encoder & Decoder

How to use URL Encoder & Decoder

1. Choose Encode or Decode with the mode toggle.
2. Paste your text or URL into the input field.
3. The output updates instantly — no button press.
4. Copy the result and paste it into your URL, form data, or code.

Common use cases

• URL query parameters. Encode spaces, ampersands, and special characters so ?q=hello world becomes ?q=hello%20world. Without encoding, the URL breaks or gets misparsed.
• Non-English text in URLs. Turkish (ş, ğ), Chinese, Arabic and emoji all need percent-encoding to travel safely in URLs. Encode before pasting into email or SMS.
• Debugging API requests. Decoded query strings from browser DevTools help you read what an application actually sent — great for reproducing bugs.
• Form data (application/x-www-form-urlencoded). The same encoding is used in POST form bodies. Encode field values manually when writing curl requests or building URL-encoded payloads.

Tips

• Two variants exist: encodeURI (leaves reserved characters like : / ? alone) and encodeURIComponent (encodes everything). This tool uses encodeURIComponent — the safer choice for values.
• The + sign in URL bodies means space. When decoding query strings that came from HTML forms, replace + with space before URL-decoding.
• Percent-encoded characters use UTF-8 by default. Legacy systems using Windows-1252 or Latin-1 will produce different byte sequences.
• Base64 and URL encoding solve different problems. Base64 is for binary; URL encoding is for making text URL-safe.

Troubleshooting

Some characters aren't being encoded.

Letters, digits, - _ . ~ are unreserved characters — safe in URLs and not encoded. This is per RFC 3986 and correct behavior.

'%' followed by non-hex character fails to decode.

Literal percent signs in text must be double-encoded (%25). Otherwise the decoder treats them as broken escapes.