URL Encoder

What the URL Encoder tool does

This makes your text safe to put inside a web address by replacing the characters a URL cannot carry with percent codes. Type or paste your text, press Convert, and copy or download the result. A space, for instance, becomes %20, and an ampersand becomes %26, so the result can sit inside a link without breaking it. This is the encoding you see all the time in the messy-looking part of a URL after a search.

It runs in your browser, so nothing you enter is uploaded.

How to use it

1. Enter your text. Type or paste the text you want to put into a URL.
2. Set the plus-sign option if you need it. There is a choice for how spaces are handled in a query string, explained below.
3. Press Convert. The encoded text appears, ready to Copy or Download.

What URL encoding is

A web address is only allowed to contain a limited set of characters, and some of those characters are reserved because they do real work: the slash separates parts of a path, the question mark begins the query, the ampersand divides one query value from the next. So if your actual data contains a space, an ampersand, a non-English letter, or any of those reserved characters meant literally, it cannot just be dropped into the URL as-is. URL encoding, also called percent-encoding, solves this by replacing each such character with a percent sign followed by its value in hexadecimal. A space is character 32, which is 20 in hex, so it becomes %20; an ampersand becomes %26. The browser knows to read those codes back into the real characters, so your data travels safely inside the address.

Encoding a value, and the plus-sign option

This tool encodes text the thorough way, the form meant for a single piece of data rather than a whole address. That matters because it also encodes the reserved characters like the slash and the ampersand, turning them into codes too. So it is the right choice for encoding one value you are about to slot into a URL, such as a search term or a single query parameter, and not for encoding an entire finished URL, where you would want the slashes and colons left working.

The plus-sign option deals with one small historical quirk. In the query part of a URL, the part after the question mark, an old and still common convention writes a space as a plus sign rather than as %20. The two mean the same thing in that context. The option lets you produce the plus-sign style when you are building a query string that expects it, while the default uses the more universally safe %20.

It is not the same as HTML encoding

Worth a clear word, because the two get mixed up. URL encoding, the kind here, makes text safe inside a web address, using percent codes like %20. HTML encoding makes text safe inside a web page, using entities like <, and is handled by the HTML Encode tool. They are not interchangeable: percent codes mean nothing in the body of a page, and HTML entities break a URL. Choose the one that fits where your text is headed.

Going the other way

If you have an encoded string full of percent codes and want the plain text back, that is the opposite job, handled by the URL Decoder tool. This one turns characters into percent codes; that one turns percent codes back into characters.

Questions people ask

Which characters get encoded?

Spaces, reserved characters like the slash, question mark, and ampersand, and anything outside the basic safe set, including non-English letters. Ordinary letters, digits, and a few safe symbols are left alone.

What is the difference between %20 and a plus sign?

Both can mean a space. In a query string, the old form-style convention uses a plus sign, while %20 works everywhere. The default here uses %20, and the option lets you switch to the plus style.

Can I encode a whole URL with this?

It is built for encoding a single value to put into a URL, so it also encodes slashes and colons. For a finished address you usually want those left working, so encode the individual pieces rather than the whole thing.

Is this the same as HTML encoding?

No. URL encoding makes text safe inside a web address, while HTML encoding makes it safe inside a web page. Use the HTML Encode tool for the latter.

References

1. Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., Masinter, L. (2005). RFC 3986: Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986
2. WHATWG. URL Standard. https://url.spec.whatwg.org/