CommandDialog

URL Encoder / Decoder

Converts special characters in a URL into a format that can be safely transmitted over the internet, encoding non-alphanumeric characters as percent-encoded values and decoding them back.

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What is a URL Encoder & Decoder tool?

Navigating the complexities of web URLs requires precision. Our URL Encoder & Decoder is a professional-grade utility designed to help you transform special characters into a format that is 100% compliant with internet protocols. Whether you are a developer debugging API calls or a marketer cleaning up tracking links, this tool ensures your data travels safely across the web.

Why Do You Need URL Encoding?

URLs are designed to be sent over the internet using the ASCII character set. However, URLs often contain characters outside this set or “reserved” characters that have special meanings (like ?, &, and =).

URL Encoding, also known as Percent-encoding, replaces these unsafe characters with a % followed by two hexadecimal digits. For example:

  • A Space becomes %20 or +.
  • An Ampersand (&) becomes %26.
  • A Forward Slash (/) becomes %2F.

Using our tool prevents “broken links” and ensures that web servers interpret your query parameters correctly according to RFC 3986 standards.

Why Use Our URL Tool?

Instant Bi-Directional Conversion

Switch seamlessly between Encode and Decode modes with zero latency.

  • Encode Mode: Paste your plain text or “dirty” URL to generate a safe, encoded string.
  • Decode Mode: Take a complex, percent-encoded string and turn it back into human-readable text.

High-Fidelity Security & Privacy

We prioritize your data sovereignty. Unlike many online converters, our tool processes your data locally in your browser—no data is ever uploaded to our servers. This makes it completely safe to process sensitive information such as API keys, OAuth tokens, and private internal parameters without any risk of data leaks or third-party logging.

Developer-Friendly Interface

Our clean, side-by-side layout allows you to see your input and output simultaneously. This real-time feedback loop reduces errors during manual data entry and helps in rapid debugging of complex query strings.

How to Use the URL Encoder/Decoder

  1. Select Your Mode: Choose “Encode” if you have raw text, or “Decode” if you have a string containing % symbols.
  2. Input Your Text: Paste your string into the left-hand box (labeled “Plain Text” or “URL Encoded Text”).
  3. Get Results: The tool automatically generates the output in the right-hand box.
  4. Copy & Paste: Use the convenient “Copy” icon to grab your results instantly.

Common Use Cases

  • API Development: Correcting query strings in RESTful API requests to ensure parameters are parsed correctly.
  • SEO & Marketing: Ensuring UTM parameters with spaces or special characters don’t break tracking or redirect logic.
  • Web Scraping: Decoding complex, nested URLs found in source code to identify data patterns.
  • Social Media: Formatting links for platforms that struggle with non-standard characters in the path or query.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is my data safe when using this URL Encoder?

Yes. This tool is designed to process all data locally in your browser. Since no data is uploaded to our servers, your sensitive information like API keys or tokens remains entirely private.

What is Percent-encoding?

Percent-encoding is a mechanism for encoding information in a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). It replaces reserved characters with a ’%’ sign followed by their two-digit hexadecimal ASCII value.

Can I encode non-English characters like Chinese or Arabic?

Absolutely. Our tool supports UTF-8 encoding. Non-ASCII characters are first converted to UTF-8 bytes, and then each byte is percent-encoded.

Why does a space sometimes turn into a '+' instead of '%20'?

While ‘%20’ is the standard for URIs, the ’+’ sign is often used specifically in ‘application/x-www-form-urlencoded’ query strings. Both are widely recognized by web servers.

Does this tool support RFC 3986?

Yes, our encoder follows the current internet standard (RFC 3986) for URI character encoding to ensure maximum compatibility across all modern web browsers and servers.