Decoded⇄Encoded
chars 0
escapes 0
Decoded
drop a .txt file here0 bytes
DEC
ENC
Encoded
drop a .txt file here0 bytes
What does a URL encode/decode converter do?
URLs can only safely contain a limited set of characters. Anything else — spaces, &, ?, #, accented letters, emoji — has to be represented as a % followed by its hex byte value (percent-encoding), or it can break the URL or change what it means. An unencoded & inside a query value, for example, looks like the start of an entirely new parameter.
This shows up constantly: putting a search term with spaces into a URL, passing one full URL as a parameter to another (like a redirect link), making sure special characters in form data don't corrupt a query string, or just decoding a URL you're inspecting so it's actually readable.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between "Component" and "Full URL" mode?
"Component" (
encodeURIComponent) escapes almost everything except unreserved characters — use it for a single value, like one query parameter, since it correctly escapes &, ?, and /. "Full URL" (encodeURI) leaves URL-structure characters like /, :, ?, and & alone — use it when you're encoding a whole URL that already has its structure in place, so you don't mangle the http:// or the slashes.What happens if I try to decode something invalid?
You'll get a clear error message rather than a cryptic failure — invalid percent-encoding (like a stray
% not followed by two hex digits) is checked for before decoding.Does it handle non-English characters and emoji?
Yes — both encoding functions operate on UTF-8 byte sequences, so accented letters, non-Latin scripts, and emoji all encode and decode correctly.