URL Encoder & Decoder

How to URL encode or decode

1. Paste text, a query value or a whole URL into the Input box.
2. Pick a mode. Query value / component escapes everything that is not safe inside a parameter, including &, =, / and ?. Full URL keeps the URL structure and only escapes characters such as spaces and non-English letters.
3. Click Encode or Decode. When the input is a full URL, you also get a breakdown of its parts and every query parameter, decoded.

What is URL encoding?

A URL may only contain a limited set of characters. Anything else, such as spaces, quotes, emoji or letters like é and ش, has to be written as a percent sign followed by the byte value in hex. This is called percent-encoding. For example, a space becomes %20, & becomes %26, and é becomes %C3%A9 (its two UTF-8 bytes).

Some characters are reserved because they have a job in the URL: ? starts the query string, & separates parameters, = separates a name from its value and # starts the fragment. If one of these appears inside a value, it must be encoded, or the URL means something different from what you intended.

Component vs full URL encoding

In JavaScript these are encodeURIComponent() and encodeURI():

encodeURIComponent('fish & chips')  // "fish%20%26%20chips"
encodeURI('https://site.com/a b?x=1')  // "https://site.com/a%20b?x=1"

Use component encoding for each value you insert into a link or an API request. Use full-URL encoding only to clean up a complete address that already has the right structure.

Why form data uses + for spaces

When an HTML form is submitted with the default application/x-www-form-urlencoded encoding, the browser joins every field as name=value pairs separated by &, and writes spaces as +. So a message field containing "Hi there" arrives as message=Hi+there. Turn on Treat + as space when you decode data copied from a form post or a server log.

Common URL encoding mistakes

• Double encoding. Encoding an already encoded value turns %20 into %2520. Decode first if you are not sure.
• Encoding the whole URL as a component. This escapes :// and / and breaks the link.
• Forgetting to encode user input. A search term containing & silently splits into two parameters.
• Mixing up + and %20. In a path, + is a literal plus sign. Only in form-encoded query data does it mean a space.

Handling form submissions

If you are decoding form posts because you are building your own form handler, you can skip that work entirely. formvoxo gives any HTML form a hosted endpoint, decodes every field and emails the submission to you, with spam filtering built in. Read the docs to set it up in a few minutes.

Want the full guide? Read URL Encoding Explained: Percent-Encoding, Query Strings and Form Data.

Frequently asked questions