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🔗 URL Encoder / Decoder

Encode special characters for safe use in URLs, or decode percent-encoded URLs back to readable text.

📖 What is URL Encoding?

URL encoding (also called percent-encoding) replaces special characters in URLs with a percent sign (%) followed by two hexadecimal digits. This is necessary because URLs can only contain a limited set of characters from the ASCII character set. Characters like spaces, ampersands (&), question marks (?), and non-ASCII characters must be encoded.

For example, a space becomes %20, an ampersand becomes %26, and the Japanese character あ becomes %E3%81%82. This tool supports both encodeURI() (preserves URL structure characters like :/?) and encodeURIComponent() (encodes everything for use as a query parameter value).

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

encodeURI() encodes a complete URI, preserving characters that have special meaning in URLs (like :, /, ?, #, &). encodeURIComponent() encodes everything, making it suitable for encoding parameter values that might contain these special characters.

URLs can only contain ASCII letters, digits, and a few special characters. If your URL contains spaces, non-English characters, or special symbols, they must be percent-encoded to be valid. Without encoding, the URL may break or be misinterpreted by browsers and servers.

📖 What Is URL Encoding?

URL encoding (percent-encoding) converts special characters into a format that can be safely transmitted in URLs. Characters like spaces, ampersands, and non-ASCII characters are replaced with percent-encoded equivalents (e.g., space becomes %20). This is essential for building query strings, API parameters, and handling international characters in URLs.

Process your URLs and parameters locally without any server transmission — safe for encoding sensitive query parameters and API endpoints.

🚀 How to Use This Tool

  1. Enter text or URL to encode/decode
  2. Click Encode to percent-encode special characters
  3. Or paste encoded text and click Decode
  4. Copy the result for use in your URLs or API calls

💡 Tips & Best Practices

Developer Tip: Always encode query parameter values. Use encodeURIComponent() for values and encodeURI() for full URLs in JavaScript. Don't double-encode already encoded strings.

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