URL Decoder / Encoder

What Is URL Encoding (Percent Encoding)?

URL encoding — officially called percent-encoding — is a mechanism for representing characters in a URL that would otherwise be invalid or ambiguous. Because URLs can only contain a restricted set of ASCII characters, any character outside that set (spaces, unicode letters, special punctuation) must be replaced by a percent sign followed by two hexadecimal digits representing the character's byte value. For example, a space becomes %20, a question mark becomes %3F, and an ampersand becomes %26.

This tool decodes those sequences back to human-readable text and can also parse a full URL into its individual components — protocol, host, path, query parameters, and fragment — making it easy to inspect and debug complex URLs.

How to Decode a URL

Decoding a percent-encoded URL replaces each %XX sequence with the actual character it represents. For instance:

• %20 → space
• %3F → ?
• %26 → &
• %3D → =
• %2F → /
• %23 → #

Paste any encoded URL into the input above and the tool handles decoding instantly. If the input is a valid URL it will also break it apart into protocol, hostname, port, path, query string parameters, and fragment hash — each shown in a labelled row so you can inspect the structure at a glance.

URL Decoding in JavaScript

JavaScript provides two built-in functions. Use decodeURIComponent() to decode individual query values — it converts every %XX sequence including reserved characters like / ? # & =. Use decodeURI() for a complete URL when you want to preserve those reserved characters so the URL remains valid.

decodeURIComponent('hello%20world%3F')  // → "hello world?"
decodeURI('https://example.com/path%20name?q=hello%20world')
// → "https://example.com/path name?q=hello%20world"

URL Decoding in Python

Python's urllib.parse module handles percent-decoding with unquote(). For query strings, parse_qs() returns a dict of lists and parse_qsl() returns an ordered list of (key, value) tuples.

from urllib.parse import unquote, parse_qs

unquote('hello%20world%26more')  # → "hello world&more"

parse_qs('q=hello+world&lang=en')
# → {'q': ['hello world'], 'lang': ['en']}

URL Decoding in Java

Java's java.net.URLDecoder decodes application/x-www-form-urlencoded strings. Always specify the charset to avoid platform-dependent behaviour:

import java.net.URLDecoder;
import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;

String decoded = URLDecoder.decode("hello+world%21", StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
// → "hello world!"

URL Decoding in C#

In .NET, Uri.UnescapeDataString() decodes percent-encoded sequences without touching + signs. HttpUtility.UrlDecode() (from System.Web) also converts + to space, matching form-encoding behaviour.

Uri.UnescapeDataString("hello%20world%3F")   // → "hello world?"
System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlDecode("hello+world%21")  // → "hello world!"

Common Encoded Characters Reference

Related tools: URL Extractor, URL to Base64, Base64 Decoder

How to Use

1. 1
   Paste the encoded URL — paste any percent-encoded URL or query string into the input field.
2. 2
   Select mode — choose Decode to convert %XX sequences to readable characters, or Encode to escape special characters.
3. 3
   View results — the decoded/encoded URL appears instantly, along with a structured breakdown of URL components and query parameters.
4. 4
   Copy the result — use the Copy button or click individual component values to copy them.

Frequently Asked Questions