URL Encoder – Encode URL Online (Free Tool)
Free online URL Encoder tool to encode URLs and text for safe transmission. Convert special characters, spaces, and reserved characters to percent-encoded format for use in URLs and query strings. Essential for web developers building URLs with dynamic parameters. All encoding happens locally in your browser.
What is URL Encoder?
URL Encode converts text into percent-encoded form so it can be safely placed in a query string, path segment, or form body. The tool uses RFC 3986 reserved-character rules and encodes Unicode as UTF-8 then percent-encodes each byte — exactly what browsers, fetch(), and curl do. Encoding runs locally; no input is logged.
Why use this tool?
- Lightweight page weight that loads quickly even on slow connections
- Works on desktop, tablet, and mobile in any modern browser
- Stable behavior across visits — no surprise version drift
- No telemetry on the tokens, payloads, or code you paste in
- Built for developer workflows: copy-friendly output, syntax-aware highlighting where useful
How to use
- Paste your input into the url encoder area
- Configure the options if the defaults don't match your case
- Click the action button and inspect the result
- Copy the output to your clipboard or download as a file
Examples
Encode a search query
Input: "hello world & friends" Output: "hello%20world%20%26%20friends" — safe to drop into ?q= without breaking the URL parser.
Build a redirect parameter
Encode a full URL (including its own query string) before embedding it as a value of ?redirect_uri= so the consumer can decode it cleanly.
Encode non-ASCII text
Input: "café" Output: "caf%C3%A9" — UTF-8 bytes 0xC3 0xA9 percent-encoded.
Common use cases
- Building API request URLs from user input safely
- Constructing OAuth redirect_uri parameters without manual escaping
- Encoding form data to send as application/x-www-form-urlencoded
- Quoting filenames inside Content-Disposition headers
- Producing valid mailto:, sms:, and other URI scheme links
Troubleshooting
- My + signs disappeared after decoding on the server.
- In form encoding, + means space. Use the "encode all" mode to percent-encode + as %2B if it must survive form parsing.
- Slashes got encoded but I wanted to keep the path intact.
- Use encodeURI semantics (encode only unsafe chars) instead of encodeURIComponent. The tool offers both modes — pick "encode component" for full encoding.
- Encoded text decodes to garbage on the other side.
- The receiver is probably decoding as Latin-1 or assuming a different charset. URLs should be UTF-8 — fix the receiver to use UTF-8 decoding.
Frequently Asked Questions
URL encoding (percent encoding) converts characters into a format that can be transmitted over the Internet. Special characters are replaced with % followed by two hexadecimal digits.
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