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URL Encode and Decode Online: Free, RFC 3986 Safe

Spaces, ampersands, and accents break links unless they are encoded. This page fixes that both ways: url encode and url decode in your browser, free, following RFC 3986 so every reserved character is handled. It is a url encode decode tool that keeps your data local.

Hello WorldHello%20World%21URL

Encoding and decoding

Entities out, entities in.

To make a string safe for a link or a query parameter, paste it and encode. That is url encode, and people also reach it as url encode online. The reverse turns an encoded link back into plain characters: paste it and run url decode, often searched as url decode online, to read what the link actually says.

Because both sit on one page, url encode and decode happen without switching tools. Encoding follows RFC 3986, so reserved characters like spaces, ampersands, and question marks are escaped correctly rather than guessed at.

Reading encoded links, and the JavaScript angle

Decoding makes a messy URL legible.

A long URL full of %20 and %3D is hard to read. Decoding it works like a link to text converter, turning the escapes back into normal characters, which is why some people look for a url formatter to tidy a tracking link from a log.

Under the hood, encoding here matches the JavaScript encodeURIComponent function, so a search for url encode javascript describes exactly what this does. You get the same result the browser would, without writing any code.

One tool, and how it differs from Base64

Two kinds of encoding, two jobs.

This is a single url encode decode utility, so there is no need to bounce between separate pages. It is worth not confusing it with Base64, though. URL encoding makes text safe inside a link; Base64 turns text into an ASCII blob for transport. If that second job is what you need, the Base64 tool is the encode decode online option for it.

What is urlencode, and when you actually need it

The idea behind percent-encoding.

So what is urlencode? It's the process of replacing characters that have a special meaning in a web address with a percent sign followed by two hex digits. A space becomes %20, an ampersand becomes %26, and a question mark becomes %3F. The browser and the server both agree on this mapping, so the value survives the trip inside a query string instead of being read as part of the URL's structure.

You reach for it whenever a value you don't control goes into a link: a search term, an email address, a redirect target. Encode just the value, not the whole URL, so the scheme and the slashes in the path stay intact. Decoding reverses the swap, which is how you read a percent-heavy tracking link back into plain text.

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Open URL Encoder / Decoder

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Open URL Encoder / Decoder