What characters need to be URL encoded?

Characters that are not in the unreserved set (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, -, ., _, ~) should be encoded. This includes spaces, ampersands, question marks, equals signs, slashes, and any non-ASCII characters like accented letters or emojis.

What is the difference between URL encoding and HTML encoding?

URL encoding converts characters to percent-encoded format (%XX) for safe use in URLs. HTML encoding converts characters to HTML entities (&, <, etc.) for safe display in HTML. They serve different purposes and produce different output.

Should I encode the entire URL or just the parameters?

Only encode the data values within a URL, not the URL structure itself. Encode query parameter values, path segments containing special characters, and fragment identifiers. Do not encode the protocol, domain, or structural delimiters like ? and &.

Why do spaces become %20 instead of +?

%20 is the standard percent encoding for spaces per RFC 3986. The + encoding for spaces is a convention from the application/x-www-form-urlencoded media type used in HTML form submissions. For URLs, %20 is the correct and more widely compatible encoding.

Can URL encoding handle Unicode characters?

Yes, URL encoding converts Unicode characters to their UTF-8 byte representation and then percent-encodes each byte. For example, the euro sign (€) becomes %E2%82%AC, representing its three UTF-8 bytes.

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URL Encode

URL encoding converts unsafe characters into percent-encoded format (%XX) for safe transmission in URLs. Spaces become %20, ampersands become %26, and non-ASCII characters are encoded as their UTF-8 byte sequences. It follows RFC 3986 standards.

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What is URL Encode?

URL encoding, also called percent encoding, is a mechanism for converting characters into a format that can be safely transmitted in URLs by replacing unsafe characters with percent signs followed by hexadecimal digits.

Complementary Tools

These tools work great alongside URL Encode:

URL Decode Text to URL Slug

Start Using URL Encode Today

Proper URL encoding prevents broken links, malformed query strings, and API errors caused by special characters. This tool encodes your text to RFC 3986 standards in milliseconds, entirely in your browser, with nothing sent to any server. Encode your URL parameters now and ship with confidence.

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