URL encode and decode online using this free, browser-based tool that handles percent-encoding instantly. Paste a raw URL or a percent-encoded string and convert it in either direction with no signup required. Useful for building query strings, decoding redirect parameters, debugging form submissions, and working with APIs that require properly encoded URLs.
URL Encoder and Decoder is a free browser-based tool for percent-encoding and decoding URL components. URLs can only contain a limited set of characters directly. Spaces, special characters, non-ASCII characters, and certain reserved characters must be percent-encoded (replaced with a percent sign followed by the two-character hexadecimal code) before being included in a URL. This tool accepts any text or URL string and applies percent-encoding or decoding as needed. It is used by web developers building query strings, back-end engineers constructing API endpoint URLs programmatically, and anyone who needs to safely include special characters in a URL. The tool runs entirely in the browser with no data sent to a server. No account or installation is required.
URL encoding is a frequent source of bugs in web development, particularly when handling user-generated content in query parameters. A search query containing an ampersand, for example, will break a URL if not encoded, because the ampersand is the query string delimiter character. Similarly, spaces in file names or parameter values must be encoded as %20 or + to be safely included in a URL. International characters, emoji, and characters outside the ASCII range must be UTF-8 encoded and then percent-encoded for use in URLs. URL Encoder handles this correctly, encoding the UTF-8 byte sequence for each non-ASCII character. The tool provides two modes: encoding a raw string for safe inclusion as a URL component, and decoding a percent-encoded URL string back to human-readable form. The decoding mode is useful for reading URLs that have been copied from log files, error messages, or browser address bars where the percent-encoding makes the content hard to read at a glance. It is also useful for debugging API integrations where an encoded query parameter value needs to be inspected. The difference between encodeURIComponent() (which encodes all special characters) and encodeURI() (which leaves URL structural characters like /, ?, and & unencoded) is important: the tool encodes the full component, which is the correct approach for parameter values. The tool runs free in the browser without installation.