Encode and Decode URLs
💡 About This Tool
Safely transmit URL components over HTTP. This tool converts special characters, spaces, and non-ASCII (UTF-8) text into the standardized percent-encoded format required for query parameters, API calls, and web routing.
📘 Use Cases
- Apply Percent-Encoding
Convert unsafe characters into
%xxhex format (e.g., a space becomes%20) to ensure full compliance with RFC 3986. - Debug Query Strings Decode complex or nested query parameters from server logs and analytics URLs to inspect the raw data structure.
- Sanitize Broken Links Quickly fix URLs containing reserved characters that would otherwise break your application's routing or API requests.
🧐 Frequently Asked Questions
Why do I see "%20" in my URL?
URLs cannot contain literal spaces. The %20 string is the percent-encoded representation of a space character. Depending on the implementation (like application/x-www-form-urlencoded), you might also see a + used.
Why is encoding necessary?
Standard URLs are restricted to a specific subset of ASCII characters. Reserved characters (like &, =, and ?) have functional meanings in a URL's structure. To use these characters as data, or to use non-Latin characters, you must encode them so web servers can interpret the request correctly.
📚 Pro Tip
Modern browsers often display decoded, human-readable URLs in the address bar (known as IRIs), but the actual network request sent to the server always uses the percent-encoded ASCII string.