URL encode / decode

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Example: the tool is already working on a sample input. Replace it with your own and press the button.

https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dbase64%20%26%20jwt%26lang%3Dde-AT

Characters: 74

URL encode and decode

Paste text or an encoded URL, choose encode or decode and the mode. URL component escapes every character outside A–Z a–z 0–9 - . _ ~ as %XX, so a space becomes %20. Form data follows HTML forms and writes a space as +. Text is encoded as UTF-8.

What URL encoding does

A URL may only contain a limited set of ASCII characters, and some of them – ? & = / # + – give the URL its structure. Percent-encoding (RFC 3986) writes every other byte as a percent sign followed by two hexadecimal digits, so that a value can be put into a URL without changing its meaning. Characters outside ASCII are first converted to their UTF-8 bytes: ü becomes %C3%BC.

Examples

  • a b&c becomes a%20b%26c as a URL component and a+b%26c as form data.
  • München becomes M%C3%BCnchen.
  • q=base64%20decode decodes to q=base64 decode.

URL component or form data?

Use URL component for a path segment or a single query value. It escapes the same characters as JavaScript's encodeURIComponent, plus ! ' ( ) *. Use form data for application/x-www-form-urlencoded request bodies and for query strings built by HTML forms, where + means a space. When decoding, that is the only difference: in form mode a + turns into a space, as a URL component it stays a plus sign.

Encode a whole URL?

Encode the parts, not the whole URL. Encoding https://example.com/?q=1 as one component also escapes the :, the / and the ?. That is right for a URL passed as a parameter of another URL, such as a redirect target, but not for a link that should still open.

URL encoding is not base64: to put binary data into a URL, use the URL-safe variant of the base64 encoder. Tokens in URLs are often JSON Web Tokens, which the JWT decoder reads.

Base64, URL and JWT tools
base64 stringbase64 decodebase64 encodeURL encode / decodeJWT decoder

Frequently asked questions

What does URL encoding do?
It replaces every character that is not allowed or has a special meaning in a URL with a percent sign and two hexadecimal digits, so that a value can be put into a URL safely.
Should a space become %20 or +?
In a path or a single URL component a space is %20. Only in form data (application/x-www-form-urlencoded) is a space written as +.
Why does decoding fail with an error?
A percent sign has to be followed by two hexadecimal digits. A lone % or one followed by other characters is not a valid escape; the error names its position.