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URL Encoder & Decoder Online — Free Tool

Safely encode special characters in URLs or decode URL-encoded (percent-encoded) strings back to plain text.

Privacy note: All processing happens entirely in your browser. No data is sent to our servers.

About this tool

URLs reserve certain characters; others must be percent-encoded (e.g. space as %20). Encode query strings safely or decode percent-encoded URLs back to readable text.

Essential when building links, debugging redirect chains, or fixing broken query parameters in APIs.

Common use cases

  • Encoding query parameters with special characters
  • Decoding analytics or redirect URLs for inspection
  • Debugging broken links with spaces or unicode
  • Preparing safe href values in HTML templates

How to use

  1. Choose encode or decode mode.
  2. Paste the URL or text fragment to transform.
  3. Review percent-encoded or decoded output.
  4. Copy into your app, curl command, or browser bar.

This page is available at /tools/url-encoder-decoder/.

Understanding the result

  • encodeURIComponent encodes more aggressively than encodeURI—use component for query values.
  • Plus (+) in query strings sometimes means space in application/x-www-form-urlencoded.
  • Decoding invalid sequences may throw or leave sequences unchanged—verify input.
  • Unicode encodes as UTF-8 bytes then percent-hex (e.g. café → multi-byte sequence).

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FAQ

encodeURI vs encodeURIComponent?

encodeURI keeps : / ? # [ ] @ intact for full URLs. encodeURIComponent encodes those for query parameter values.

Why is space %20 or +?

Percent encoding uses %20. HTML forms often use + in application/x-www-form-urlencoded bodies.

Double encoding?

Encoding already-encoded text produces %25 sequences. Decode once to inspect original.

Is data sent to a server?

No. Encoding runs locally.