What is a URL Encoder/Decoder?

A URL Encoder/Decoder is a free online tool that converts special characters in URLs to their percent-encoded equivalents and back. URLs can only contain a limited set of characters — letters, digits, and a few symbols. When your URL contains spaces, special characters, or non-ASCII text, they must be percent-encoded (like %20 for space) to be valid. This tool handles both encoding and decoding instantly.

Why do you need URL encoding?

When building URLs with query parameters, form data, or paths that contain special characters, encoding is mandatory. An unencoded space breaks a URL, an ampersand (&) starts a new parameter, and unicode characters may cause data corruption. URL encoding ensures your data is transmitted safely and accurately through web addresses, API calls, and form submissions.

How does URL encoding work?

URL encoding replaces unsafe characters with a percent sign (%) followed by their hexadecimal ASCII value. Space becomes %20 (or + in form data), ampersand (&) becomes %26, and non-ASCII characters like "ñ" become multi-byte sequences like %C3%B1. This tool handles all standard encoding/decoding following RFC 3986, supporting both encodeURI and encodeURIComponent behaviors.