URL Encoder Decoder — Free Online Percent-Encoding Tool

URLs can only safely contain a limited set of characters — which is why a link full of %20 and %26 gibberish shows up whenever text with spaces, accents or symbols gets passed through a web address. This free URL encoder decoder translates both ways. Encode, and it converts your text into the percent-encoded form a URL can carry: spaces become %20, & becomes %26, ü becomes %C3%BC. Decode, and it turns an encoded address back into readable text, so you can finally see what that long tracking link actually says. You can encode a whole URL (keeping its : / ? and = structure intact) or encode a single value for a query string, and decoding can treat + as a space the way form data does. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere.

Component mode vs full-URL mode

The mode selector is the one choice that matters here. Component mode (JavaScript’s encodeURIComponent) encodes every character that has a special meaning in a URL — including /, ?, & and = — and it is the right choice when you are encoding one piece of a URL: a search term, a redirect target, a file name, a value you are putting after ?q=. Full-URL mode (encodeURI) leaves the URL’s skeleton alone and only encodes characters that can never appear, like spaces and accented letters; use it to clean up a complete address you were given, for example one containing a ü or an emoji in the path. Picking the wrong one is the classic beginner mistake: component-encoding a whole URL destroys its structure, and full-encoding a query value lets a stray & split your value into two parameters.

The characters that always need encoding

Spaces become %20 (or + in form data). Reserved characters — & ? = # / : ; + — carry structural meaning, so inside a value they must be encoded (%26, %3F, %3D, %23…) or the browser will read them as structure. Non-ASCII letters are encoded as their UTF-8 bytes: é is %C3%A9, ü is %C3%BC, and an emoji is four percent-coded bytes. Already-encoded text is a trap: encoding a string that contains %20 without decoding first gives you %2520, which decodes back to %20 rather than a space — the famous double-encoding bug. If a link looks double-encoded, decode it twice with the tool above.

Why decoding fails sometimes

Decoding throws an error when the text contains a broken percent sequence — a lone %, or % followed by characters that are not hexadecimal, like %zz or %2. It can also fail when a multi-byte sequence was cut in half, which happens when an encoded URL gets truncated in a spreadsheet or a chat message. The error box above tells you when this happens instead of silently returning garbage; the fix is to find the complete, untruncated string. One more subtlety: in query strings produced by HTML forms, + really does mean a space, but in a URL path a + is a literal plus sign — the checkbox above lets you choose which rule the decoder applies.

Frequently asked questions

Is URL encoding the same as encryption?

No. Encoding is a public, reversible translation that anyone can undo with this very tool. It makes text safe to carry inside a URL; it hides nothing.

Why does the same character look different in different URLs?

Because two conventions coexist: %20 is the percent-encoding of a space used in paths, while + means space in form-encoded query strings (the application/x-www-form-urlencoded format). Both can appear in the wild, and this decoder can handle either.

Does this tool work for whole URLs with many parameters?

Yes. Paste the entire address, choose full-URL mode to encode it or decode it as-is. If you need to rebuild one parameter’s value, extract that value and use component mode on it alone.

Is anything I paste sent to a server?

No. Encoding and decoding happen with JavaScript in your browser tab, so URLs containing session IDs, tokens or personal data are safe to inspect here.

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URL Encoder Decoder — Encode and Decode URLs Online