What is URL Encode?

URLs have a restricted alphabet: letters, digits, and a handful of symbols travel freely, but spaces, ampersands, question marks, and non-ASCII characters must be disguised. The URL Encode tool applies that disguise, converting "hello world" into "hello%20world" — replacing every forbidden character with a % followed by its two-digit hex byte value.

Encoding is mandatory whenever dynamic text enters a URL. A search box submits "fish & chips" as "fish%20%26%20chips"; a filename with spaces becomes a downloadable link only after encoding; non-English path segments travel as percent-encoded UTF-8. Skip this step and servers misread your parameters, truncate your paths, or reject the request outright.

How to use

1. Type or paste the text you need inside a URL — a search term, a filename, a full address with spaces, or a query value.
2. The encoder walks through the text byte by byte (UTF-8), leaving unreserved characters (A–Z, a–z, 0–9, -, _, ., ~) untouched.
3. Click encode. Every other byte becomes %XX: spaces turn into %20, "&" into %26, and "é" into the two triplets %C3%A9.
4. Copy the encoded result and place it in your href, API call, or redirect where the raw text would break.

Common use cases

• Building query strings: User input containing &, =, or spaces would corrupt a "?q=..." parameter. Encoding it first keeps each value intact and correctly delimited.
• Linking to files: "Q3 Report (final).pdf" is not a valid URL path as-is. Encoding produces a link every browser and server resolves correctly.
• API requests: REST calls with search terms, filters, or callbacks in the URL need encoding, or the server parses the parameters wrong.
• Redirect targets: Passing a return URL as a parameter ("?next=/a b") requires encoding the inner URL so the outer one stays parseable.

Example

Input:  fish & chips = £5
Output: fish%20%26%20chips%20%3D%20%C2%A35

FAQs

Which characters are left unencoded?

The unreserved set defined by the URL standard: letters, digits, hyphen, underscore, period, and tilde. Everything else — including reserved characters like /, ?, and # when they appear inside a value rather than as URL structure — gets encoded.

Should spaces become %20 or +?

In URL paths, always %20. The + form means space only in form-encoded query strings (the format browsers use when submitting forms). This tool emits %20, which is correct everywhere; convert to + only if a legacy form handler specifically demands it.

Why is "é" three characters in the output?

Because encoding works on bytes: UTF-8 represents "é" as two bytes (C3 A9), each becoming its own % triplet. The encoded form is longer, but decoding reassembles the bytes into the original character exactly.

What if my text is already encoded?

Encoding it again double-encodes: "%20" becomes "%2520". Browsers then decode only one layer, leaving literal "%20" text in your page. If output shows %25 sequences you did not expect, your input was already encoded — decode first, then encode once.