About this tool
URLs can only safely contain a limited set of characters. URL (percent) encoding replaces unsafe characters — spaces, symbols, non-ASCII text — with a % followed by their hex code, so they survive being placed in a URL or query string.
How it works
- Switch between Encode and Decode.
- Encoding uses encodeURIComponent, which is safe for query string values.
- Decoding reverses percent-encoded sequences back into readable text.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between encodeURI and encodeURIComponent?
encodeURI leaves characters like / and & untouched because it expects a full URL. encodeURIComponent escapes those too, since it's meant for individual query parameter values — this tool uses the component variant, the one you want for query strings.
Why does a + sometimes mean space instead of %20?
Inside an application/x-www-form-urlencoded body (classic HTML form submissions), spaces are encoded as + rather than %20. This tool uses the %20 convention used by encodeURIComponent.