URL Encoder / Decoder

How to encode or decode a URL

1. Choose Encode to make text safe for a URL, or Decode to make an encoded URL readable.
2. Paste your text. The result appears instantly.
3. When decoding a full URL, its query parameters are listed in a table for easy reading.

Characters that must be encoded

Spaces, quotes, < >, #, % and non-ASCII characters (like é or 中) always need encoding. Inside a query value, &, =, ? and / must also be encoded, or they will be read as part of the URL structure. That is the most common cause of broken tracking links and API calls.

Examples

• Tom & Jerry → Tom%20%26%20Jerry
• café → caf%C3%A9
• a/b?c=d → a%2Fb%3Fc%3Dd (component mode)

Related: Base64 Encoder and QR Code Generator for sharing links.

How percent-encoding works

Each character that is not allowed in a URL is converted to its UTF-8 bytes, and each byte is written as % followed by two hexadecimal digits. A space is the single byte 0x20, so it becomes %20. The character é is two bytes in UTF-8 (0xC3 0xA9), so it becomes %C3%A9. Letters, digits and the characters - _ . ~ never need encoding.

Encoding query parameters correctly

When building a link with parameters, encode each value separately rather than the whole URL. For example, to search for “rock & roll”, the URL should be ?q=rock%20%26%20roll. If the & is not encoded, the server sees two parameters: q=rock and an empty parameter called roll. This is a frequent bug in marketing links, redirect URLs and API calls.

Double encoding

If you see sequences like %2520 in a URL, the text has been encoded twice: % was itself encoded as %25. Decode once to see %20 and once more to get the space. Double encoding usually happens when a value is encoded by your code and then again by a library or framework.

UTM tracking links

Campaign names in UTM parameters often contain spaces or symbols. Encode them before pasting into ads or newsletters, and decode a tracking URL here to check exactly what will be recorded in your analytics.

URL encoding in code

• JavaScript: encodeURIComponent(value) and decodeURIComponent(text); build query strings with URLSearchParams.
• Python: urllib.parse.quote(value, safe='') and urllib.parse.unquote(text).
• PHP: rawurlencode() and rawurldecode().
• Java: URLEncoder.encode(value, StandardCharsets.UTF_8) (note: it encodes spaces as +).

Use these when building URLs in code instead of concatenating strings by hand, to avoid broken links and security issues.