QQuickKit

URL Encoder

Encode and decode URL components

About This Tool

Copy a URL from your browser and paste it somewhere that parses it strictly — half the characters might cause problems. Spaces, non-ASCII text, and special symbols need to be percent-encoded (%XX) to travel safely through URLs. This tool is handy when you're building query strings, debugging a mangled API endpoint, or just need to decode what a percent-encoded URL actually says.

Features

  • ✓Non-ASCII characters handled correctly — Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and all special characters encode using the same encodeURIComponent standard your browser uses.
  • ✓Encode and decode both work — Convert raw text to a URL-safe format, or decode a percent-encoded string back to something readable — switch tabs to go either direction.
  • ✓Malformed input gets caught — Broken percent sequences like %ZZ or a truncated % trigger an error instead of silently producing wrong output.
  • ✓Copy wherever you need it — One-click copy to your clipboard, ready to paste into Postman, code, or the browser address bar.
  • ✓Nothing leaves your browser — All processing is local. URL content and query parameters never get sent anywhere.

FAQ

What's the difference between URL encoding and HTML encoding?
URL encoding (%20, %E5…) makes special characters safe inside a URL. HTML encoding (<, &…) makes special characters display correctly inside HTML markup. Different jobs, different contexts — they're not interchangeable.
Should a space be %20 or +?
In a URL path, always %20. In query strings, the old form-submission spec used + for spaces, but modern standards recommend %20 everywhere. This tool uses encodeURIComponent, so spaces come out as %20.
Why do non-English characters need encoding in URLs?
The original URL spec (RFC 3986) only allowed ASCII. Browsers show non-ASCII in the address bar for readability, but they secretly convert it to percent-encoded UTF-8 before actually sending the request. The Chinese for "Taiwan" (台灣) becomes %E5%8F%B0%E7%81%A3 under the hood.
Which characters don't need encoding?
Letters (A–Z, a–z), digits (0–9), and these four: hyphen (-), underscore (_), period (.), tilde (~). Everything else should be encoded, especially characters like & # ? = that have special meaning in URLs.

Further Reading