About the URL Encoder / Decoder
URLs may only contain letters, digits and a few symbols, so spaces and characters such as é or ü must be percent-encoded (for example é → %C3%A9). That is why a link that looks readable in the address bar turns into a long string of %C3… codes when you copy it.
This tool supports both JavaScript methods, encodeURIComponent and encodeURI, and if a % sequence is malformed it tells you exactly which character is the problem.
How to use
- Choose Encode or Decode.
- Pick Value (Component) for a single search term or parameter value, or Full URL (URI) for a complete address.
- The result updates as you type. Click ⇅ Use output as input to convert it back the other way.
- Paste an address into the URL parser below to see its protocol, host, path and query parameters separately.
encodeURIComponent vs encodeURI
| Characters | encodeURIComponent | encodeURI |
|---|---|---|
| Spaces, non-ASCII (é, ü, 日) | encoded | encoded |
| : / ? # & = + , ; @ $ | encoded | kept |
| A-Z a-z 0-9 - _ . ! ~ * ' ( ) | kept | kept |
If a query value contains & or =, encodeURI will split the parameters incorrectly. Always use the Component method for values.
Is a space %20 or +?
In the URL standard (RFC 3986) a space is %20. HTML form submissions (application/x-www-form-urlencoded), however, write spaces as +, which is why a Google search URL looks like q=coffee+shop. Turn on + as spaces when decoding such URLs.
FAQ
Decoding says the bytes are not valid UTF-8.
Some older sites encode characters in Windows-1252 or ISO-8859-1, where é is a single byte (%E9). Modern browsers and this tool use UTF-8 (where é is %C3%A9), so such legacy URLs can’t be decoded as text.
What happens if a URL is encoded twice?
Every % becomes %25, giving strings like %25C3%25A9. If you see lots of %25 in a result, it was double-encoded. Decode it twice.
Are international domain names percent-encoded?
No. Domains use Punycode instead (starting with xn--). For example münchen.de becomes xn--mnchen-3ya.de, which the URL parser shows as the host.