🔗 URL Encoder & Decoder

What This Tool Does

This tool encodes and decodes URLs. Paste text or a URL with special characters and it converts them into the percent-encoded form that web addresses require; paste encoded text full of percent signs and it decodes it back into readable characters. It is an everyday helper for developers building links, debugging query strings, and working with anything that travels through a URL.

URLs can only contain a limited set of characters, so anything outside that set — spaces, accented letters, symbols, and many punctuation marks — has to be encoded to travel safely in a web address. This tool handles that conversion both directions, saving you from doing it by hand and from the subtle bugs that broken encoding causes.

How URL Encoding Works

URL encoding, also called percent-encoding, replaces unsafe characters with a percent sign followed by two hexadecimal digits representing the character's value. A space becomes %20, an ampersand becomes %26, a question mark becomes %3F. This lets characters that would otherwise have special meaning in a URL — or that are not allowed at all — be carried safely as data rather than being misinterpreted as part of the URL's structure.

The reason this matters is that certain characters control how a URL is parsed. A question mark starts the query string, an ampersand separates parameters, a slash separates path segments. If you want one of those characters to appear as actual data — say, an ampersand inside a search term — it must be encoded, or the browser will read it as structure and your link will break. Encoding removes that ambiguity, which is why it is essential whenever user input or arbitrary text ends up in a URL.

Quick Tips

• Always encode user input or arbitrary text before putting it in a URL, so special characters do not break the link.
• Watch for double-encoding — if you see %2520, a %20 was encoded a second time.
• Decode a suspicious URL to see exactly what data it carries; it is a useful debugging step.
• Spaces become %20, and the encoding is what lets symbols travel safely in a web address.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is URL encoding?

It is the process of replacing characters that are unsafe or have special meaning in a URL with a percent sign and two hexadecimal digits. A space becomes %20, for example, so the character can travel safely in a web address.

Why do spaces turn into %20?

Because spaces are not allowed in URLs. Percent-encoding replaces the space with %20 — the percent sign plus the hex value for a space — so it can be carried in the URL without breaking it.

What is double-encoding?

It happens when text is encoded twice, turning a %20 into %2520. It is a common bug that breaks links, and decoding the URL reveals it. Encode each value once, at the right step.

When do I need to encode a URL?

Whenever you put arbitrary text — user input, search terms, names, or anything with special characters — into a URL. Encoding ensures those characters are treated as data, not as parts of the URL's structure.