URL Encode / Decode

URL encoding, also called percent-encoding, replaces characters that are not allowed in a URL with a % sign followed by their hexadecimal code. For example, a space becomes %20 and an ampersand becomes %26. It lets you safely include spaces, symbols, and non-English characters in web addresses and query strings.

A raw space is not permitted inside a URL. In the path and query, percent-encoding turns a space into %20. In older HTML form submissions (application/x-www-form-urlencoded), spaces become a plus sign instead. This calculator uses %20, the standard for encodeURIComponent.

encodeURI is meant for a full URL and leaves characters like / ? & = intact so the address still works. encodeURIComponent is for a single piece of data — a query parameter value, for instance — and escapes those reserved characters too. This tool uses encodeURIComponent, which is what you usually want for form and query values.

Letters, digits, and a few safe symbols (- _ . ! ~ * and parentheses) are left as-is. Everything else — spaces, &, =, ?, /, #, +, non-Latin letters, emoji — is percent-encoded. Non-ASCII characters are first converted to UTF-8 bytes, each shown as its own %XX sequence.

No. Like Base64, URL encoding is fully reversible and provides no security — it is purely about making data safe to transmit in a URL. It does not hide, encrypt, or protect the content in any way. Anyone can decode a percent-encoded string instantly.