URL Encoder
Percent-encode or decode a URL component, runs entirely in your browser.
About this tool
Percent-encodes text so it is safe to place inside a URL, or decodes a percent-encoded string back to plain text. Characters like spaces, ampersands, and slashes have special meaning inside a URL, so a query value containing them has to be escaped before it can travel safely as part of a link.
This tool encodes a single component (a query string value or path segment), the same behavior as JavaScript’s encodeURIComponent, not a whole URL. That distinction matters: encoding a full URL with a component-level encoder would also escape the slashes and colons that make it a URL in the first place, breaking it rather than protecting it.
Everything runs locally in your browser with no network request, so it is safe to use with values that contain tokens, internal identifiers, or other data you would not want logged by a third-party service.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between this and encoding a full URL?
- A full URL has structural characters (like the colon and slashes after "https") that must stay unescaped for it to remain a valid URL, while a component (a single query value or path segment) has none of those, so every reserved character in it should be escaped. Encoding a whole URL with a component encoder breaks it.
- Why does a space become %20 in one place and + in another?
- Both are valid space encodings, but in different contexts. The URL path and encodeURIComponent use %20; the "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" format used for query strings in HTML forms uses +. Most servers accept either in a query string, but the two are not always interchangeable in other positions of a URL.
- Why did decoding fail on my input?
- decodeURIComponent throws when it finds a "%" that is not followed by two valid hexadecimal digits, which usually means the text was not actually percent-encoded, or a literal "%" appears in a string that was never meant to be decoded.
- Is anything I paste sent anywhere?
- No. Encoding and decoding run entirely in your browser with no network requests involved.
Continue learning
- ToolBase64 EncoderEncode or decode Base64 text (standard or URL-safe) with correct UTF-8 handling; runs entirely in your browser.
- ToolURL ParserBreak a URL down into protocol, host, path, query parameters, and hash, runs entirely in your browser.
- ToolQuery Parameter BuilderBuild a correctly encoded query string from key/value pairs and append it to a base URL, runs entirely in your browser.