URL Encoder

Encode text for safe use in URLs using percent-encoding.

urlencodepercent-encodingweb

What is URL Encoder?

The URL Encoder tool converts plain text and special characters into percent-encoded strings that are safe to use inside URLs. When a URL contains characters like spaces, ampersands, slashes, or non-ASCII symbols, browsers and servers can misinterpret them — breaking links, query strings, or API requests. Percent-encoding replaces these characters with a % followed by their two-digit hexadecimal code, ensuring the string travels safely across the web.

For developers, this is an essential daily utility. Whether you're constructing query parameters manually, building redirect URLs, encoding form values, or debugging a broken endpoint, having a reliable encoder at hand saves time and eliminates hard-to-spot bugs. The tool handles the full UTF-8 character space, including emojis, accented letters, and symbols from non-Latin scripts, encoding them correctly into multi-byte percent sequences.

How to Use

Using the tool is straightforward: paste or type your raw text into the input field and the percent-encoded result appears instantly in the output area. For example, the string hello world & more! becomes hello%20world%20%26%20more%21. You can then copy the encoded output with a single click and paste it directly into your URL, query string, or code.

It's worth understanding the difference between encoding a full URL and encoding a URL component. If you encode an entire URL, characters like :, /, and ? — which are structural — will also be encoded, breaking the URL's meaning. This tool is best used on individual components such as a query parameter value, a path segment, or a fragment. Feed it only the part that needs to be safe, not the surrounding URL structure.

Edge cases to be aware of: spaces can be encoded as either %20 or + depending on the context — %20 is standard for path segments while + is common in application/x-www-form-urlencoded form data. This tool uses the standard %20 convention. Also note that already-encoded strings will be double-encoded if passed through again, so make sure your input is raw, decoded text before encoding.

Use Cases

Query parameter encoding: When appending user-supplied search terms or filter values to a URL — such as `q=hello world` — encode the value first to get `q=hello%20world`, preventing the space from being interpreted as a URL delimiter.

API request construction: When building REST API calls with dynamic path segments or query strings that include special characters (e.g., emails, dates with slashes, or JSON snippets), encoding each component ensures the HTTP request is well-formed and correctly parsed by the server.

Redirect URL handling: When embedding a return URL as a query parameter — such as `redirect=/dashboard?tab=settings` — the inner URL must be percent-encoded so the outer URL parser doesn't confuse the nested `?` and `=` for its own delimiters.

Debugging broken links: When a link is returning a 400 or 404 and the cause isn't obvious, encoding the suspect segment through this tool quickly reveals whether unescaped characters are corrupting the request path or query string.

Related Tools

Base64 Encoder

Encode text or data to Base64 format.

URL Decoder

Decode percent-encoded URL strings back to readable text.

URL Parser

Parse URLs into components: protocol, host, path, query, hash.