URL encoder and decoder
Escape text for a URL, or read an escaped one back.
A space, an ampersand or a Cyrillic letter in a URL has to be escaped or the address breaks at that point. This escapes everything a query value needs, including the characters encodeURIComponent leaves alone but RFC 3986 reserves, so the result survives servers that read the spec strictly.
How to use it
- Paste the text or the encoded string.
- Choose Encode or Decode.
- Copy the result.
Why use this tool
Completely private
Everything runs inside your browser. Your files and text are never sent to a server.
Free, with no limits
No sign-up, no watermarks and no cap on how many times you can use it.
Instant results
There is no upload or queue to wait for, so results appear as fast as your device can work.
Works on any device
Runs in any modern browser on phone, tablet or desktop. Nothing to install.
Frequently asked questions
- Why does it escape brackets and apostrophes?
- encodeURIComponent leaves ! ' ( ) * alone, but RFC 3986 lists them as reserved. Most servers cope either way; the ones that do not fail in confusing ways, so escaping them costs nothing and removes a class of problem.
- Why did my plus sign become a space?
- In a query string a plus means a space, which is older than percent-encoding and still how forms are submitted. Decoding honours that. If you need a literal plus in a value, encode it as %2B.
- What does the error mean?
- It means the input is not valid percent-encoding, usually a lone % or one cut short like %E0%A4%A. The text is shown unchanged rather than half-decoded.
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