URL Encoder and Decoder

How to encode or decode a URL

1. Choose Encode or Decode.
2. Paste your text or link into the left box, or press Try an example.
3. Set the options. When encoding, pick Encode everything for a single query value or Keep URL structure for a whole link, and decide whether spaces should become +. When decoding, switch on Treat + as a space for form-style links.
4. Copy or download the result. If you decoded a full URL, check the Query parameters table below the boxes.

Features

• Two encoding modes based on the browser's standard encodeURIComponent and encodeURI functions.
• Spaces as + option for HTML form and query-string style encoding, and the matching Treat + as a space option for decoding.
• Full UTF-8 support for any language and emoji.
• Query parameter table that lists every parameter of a pasted URL with its decoded value.
• Clear error when a link has a broken or incomplete % sequence.
• Use result as input to reverse the direction in one tap.
• Live results with character and line counts, copy and download.

Why use Fileora's URL encoder

Links frequently carry more than they appear to: session IDs, one-time login tokens, email addresses, internal redirect paths. Pasting them into an encoder that runs on someone else's server hands all of that over. Fileora encodes and decodes with the functions built into your browser, so the text never leaves your device and nothing is recorded.

It's free, requires no sign-up, and works as well on a phone as on a desktop, which is handy when you need to read a long link someone sent you in a chat.

Related tools: turn a title into a clean address with the text to slug converter, encode binary data with the Base64 encoder, or tidy a JSON API response with the JSON formatter.

Reserved characters and their encodings

A URL can only contain a limited set of ASCII characters. Some of them have jobs to do, so when they appear inside a value they must be escaped. These are the ones you'll meet most often:

• Space: not allowed at all, so it becomes %20, or + in form-style query strings.
• / separates path segments and becomes %2F inside a value.
• ? starts the query string: %3F.
• & separates one parameter from the next: %26.
• = separates a parameter name from its value: %3D.
• # starts the fragment, the part the browser keeps to itself: %23.
• % starts every escape, so a literal percent sign is %25.
• + can mean a space in forms, so a real plus sign is safest as %2B.

If a search term such as "fish & chips" isn't encoded, the & splits it into two parameters and the server only receives "fish ". Encoding the value first avoids that class of bug.