Helpful Toolbox

URL Encoder / Decoder

Make your text URL-safe (or decode the gibberish) — percent-encoding made painless.

📖 How it works & FAQ

What URL encoding actually does

A URL can only safely contain a limited set of characters — letters, digits, and a few symbols. Anything else (spaces, accented letters, emoji, ampersands, slashes inside a value) has to be "percent-encoded" so it survives the trip through browsers and servers. A space becomes %20, an ampersand becomes %26, and a question mark becomes %3F. This tool converts your text to that percent-encoded form, and turns encoded text back into plain readable characters.

When you'd reach for it

The most common case is building or reading a query string. Say you want to link to a search for coffee & cream. Dropped in raw, the & would be read as the start of a new parameter and break the link. Encoded, it becomes coffee%20%26%20cream and stays intact. It's also handy for decoding ugly links you've been sent — pasting %40-riddled UTM tracking tails or webhook payloads back into plain English to see what they really say, or for debugging an API request that isn't matching.

A quick worked example

Encoding name=José Álvarez gives name%3DJos%C3%A9%20%C3%81lvarez. Notice the accented letters expand into two-byte %C3%A9 sequences — that's UTF-8 showing through. Decoding reverses it exactly, which is why this is a safe round trip for non-English text.

How to use it

  1. Paste or type your text into the input box — a full URL, a single query value, or a chunk you copied from a link.
  2. Choose Encode to make it URL-safe, or Decode to turn percent-codes back into readable characters.
  3. Read the result in the output box and copy it with one click.
  4. Switch direction any time to check your work — encode, then decode, and confirm you get your original text back.

FAQ

Should I encode a whole URL or just one piece?
Usually just the piece — a single parameter value. Encoding an entire address turns its :// and / separators into codes too, which breaks it. Encode the value, then drop it into the URL.
Why did my space become a plus sign somewhere else?
HTML form submissions use + for spaces, while true percent-encoding uses %20. This tool uses %20, the safer form that works in both paths and query strings.
Does my text get uploaded anywhere?
No. Everything runs inside your browser — nothing you paste is sent to a server, stored, or logged.
Is it free?
Yes, completely free and supported by ads on the page.