URL Encoder

About URL Encoder

URLs can only safely contain a limited set of characters — letters, numbers, and a handful of punctuation marks like `-`, `.`, `_`, and `~`. Everything else (spaces, ampersands, question marks inside a value, non-Latin characters, emoji) has to be percent-encoded — replaced with a `%` followed by the character's hexadecimal byte value — or it risks being misinterpreted, truncated, or breaking the URL entirely when it's shared, clicked, or passed between systems. A space becomes `%20`, an ampersand becomes `%26`, and so on.

This matters constantly in practical web work: building a query string parameter that contains user input, constructing a link to a search results page for a phrase with spaces in it, embedding a URL inside another URL (like a redirect parameter), or passing a piece of text through an API that expects it in URL-encoded form. Getting this wrong is a common source of broken links — an unencoded `&` inside what should be a single parameter value gets misread by the receiving server as the start of a brand new parameter, silently corrupting the data.

This tool offers two encoding modes because JavaScript itself provides two different, deliberately-scoped functions for this. "Component" mode (the default, using `encodeURIComponent`) aggressively encodes almost everything, including characters like `/`, `?`, `&`, and `=` that have special meaning in a URL's structure — this is exactly what you want when encoding a single value that will be inserted into a query string or path segment, since it guarantees that value can't accidentally break the surrounding URL structure. "Full URL mode" (using `encodeURI`) is gentler: it assumes you're encoding an entire, already-structured URL, so it leaves characters like `:`, `/`, `?`, `&`, and `=` alone (since those are meant to keep their structural meaning) while still encoding spaces and other genuinely unsafe characters.

Choosing the wrong mode is the most common mistake: using Component mode on a full URL will over-encode it, turning `https://example.com/search?q=cats` into an unusable `https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dcats`. Use Component mode when encoding one value that's going inside a URL; use Full URL mode when encoding an entire URL that already has its structure in place.

How it works

1. Paste your text or URL. Enter the value or full URL you need to encode.
2. Pick the right mode. Use the default for a single value, or switch to Full URL mode if you're encoding an entire, already-structured URL.
3. Copy the encoded result. The percent-encoded output updates instantly as you type.