URL Encoder & Decoder

URL breakdown

If the input is a URL, its parts are listed here, with the query parameters decoded.

About this tool

URL encoding (percent-encoding) replaces characters that are not allowed in a URL with % followed by two hex digits of each UTF-8 byte, so café becomes caf%C3%A9. Use it to put values into query strings, build links by hand, or read a URL that is full of % codes.

Everything runs in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent to a server.

How it works

• Component (encodeURIComponent) encodes everything except letters, digits and - _ . ! ~ * ' ( ). Use it for a single value, such as the text after q=. If you paste a whole URL, the : / ? & = are encoded too.
• Full URL (encodeURI) keeps : / ? # & = + @ $ , ; so a complete URL stays usable. It does not protect an & or # inside a value.
• Form data is the style used by HTML forms (application/x-www-form-urlencoded): like Component, but a space becomes + and ! ' ( ) ~ are encoded as well, the way browsers submit forms. Decoding in this style turns + back into a space.
• Decoding in the other two styles leaves + as it is, because in a URL path a plus sign is just a plus sign.
• Text is always encoded as UTF-8. Old Japanese or Chinese sites that use Shift_JIS, EUC-JP or GBK produce different codes, and decoding them here fails or shows wrong characters.
• Decoding stops with an error if a % is not followed by two hex digits, or if the bytes are not valid UTF-8.

FAQ