What is URL encoding?
A web address may only contain a small set of characters. Everything else — spaces, Bangla or Arabic letters, and symbols such as & or # inside a value — has to be written as a percent sign followed by the character’s bytes in hexadecimal. A space becomes %20, and the Bangla letter ঢ becomes %E0%A6%A2. This is called percent-encoding or URL encoding.
Whole URL or part of a URL?
- A whole URL keeps the characters that give an address its structure — : / ? & = # — and encodes the rest. Use it to clean up a link before sharing it.
- Part of a URL encodes those structural characters too. Use it for a single value you are putting into a query string, such as a search term that contains & or =.
How to use the URL encoder
- Choose Encode or Decode.
- Paste your text or address. The result updates as you type.
- Copy the result, or press Use as input to run it back the other way.
Good to know
- HTML forms send spaces as + instead of %20. Tick “Spaces as +” to read or write that style.
- Text is encoded as UTF-8, the standard for the web, so every language works.
- Decoding fails only when a % is not followed by two hexadecimal digits; the message says so.
Frequently asked questions
What does %20 mean in a URL?
It is an encoded space. 20 is the hexadecimal code of the space character.
Why does my Bangla link look so long when I paste it?
Each Bangla letter takes three bytes in UTF-8, and each byte is written as %XX, so one letter becomes nine characters. Browsers show the readable form in the address bar, but copy the encoded one.
Is URL encoding the same as Base64?
No. URL encoding only replaces characters that are not allowed in addresses. Base64 rewrites all the data into a different alphabet.