URL Decode
Turn %20, %3F and other percent-encoded sequences back into plain characters. Works on whole URLs or single parameter values.
- Runs in your browser
- Free, no sign-up
What this tool gives you
Full UTF-8 support
Multi-byte sequences such as %C3%A9 become é, not garbage.
Tolerant
Malformed sequences are left as they are instead of failing the whole string.
Live
Paste and read, no button required.
Frequently asked questions
What is percent encoding?
A way to represent characters that are not allowed in URLs as a percent sign followed by two hex digits of each UTF-8 byte, like %20 for a space.
Why is + sometimes a space?
In application/x-www-form-urlencoded data, the format used by HTML forms, spaces become +. Elsewhere in a URL a + is a literal plus sign.
My string is still encoded after decoding. Why?
It was encoded twice, which is common with redirect parameters. Paste the output back in and decode once more.
Does it decode HTML entities too?
No, those are a different scheme. Use the HTML Decode tool for & and friends, then URL-decode if needed.