URL Encoder & Decoder
Encode raw text to URL-safe format or decode URL-encoded strings back to plain text.
Common URL-Encoded Characters
What is URL encoding?
URL encoding, also known as percent-encoding, is a mechanism defined in RFC 3986 for representing
characters in a URI that are not allowed or have special meaning. Each unsafe character is replaced
with a percent sign followed by two hexadecimal digits representing its ASCII code — for example,
a space becomes %20.
URLs can only contain a limited set of characters from the ASCII character set. Reserved characters
like &, =,
?, and #
have special structural meaning in a URL. If you need to include these characters as data (for example
in a query parameter value), they must be percent-encoded so that parsers do not misinterpret them.
Non-ASCII characters such as accented letters, emoji, or CJK characters are first encoded as UTF-8 bytes and then each byte is percent-encoded. This ensures that URLs remain compatible with systems that only support ASCII.
Building webhook URLs or query parameters for scheduled HTTP jobs? Make sure they are properly encoded. Try Recuro to schedule and monitor your HTTP endpoints.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is %20 in a URL?
%20 is the URL-encoded representation of a space character. When URLs contain spaces, they must be percent-encoded as %20 to be valid. Some systems use + for spaces in query strings, but %20 is universally accepted.
When do I need to URL encode?
You need to URL encode whenever you include user input, special characters, or non-ASCII characters in a URL. Common cases include query parameter values, form data, and API request parameters. Characters like &, =, ?, #, and spaces must be encoded to avoid breaking the URL structure.