URL Decode Online

Decoding URL-Encoded Strings

URL encoding (percent-encoding) replaces special characters with %-prefixed hex codes: spaces become %20, ampersands become %26, equals signs become %3D. When you encounter these in URLs, query strings, or log files, you need to decode them to read the actual content.

Our decoder handles full UTF-8 percent-encoding, including multi-byte characters (non-ASCII text like Japanese, Chinese, Arabic). It correctly decodes both %20 (standard spaces) and + (form-encoded spaces), which are different encoding schemes used in different contexts.

Common use cases: reading URLs from access logs, debugging OAuth redirect URLs (which contain encoded callback URLs inside query parameters), inspecting webhook payloads with encoded form data, and cleaning up URLs for display in user interfaces.

Tips

• %20 and + both represent spaces, but in different contexts. %20 is standard URL encoding; + is form encoding.
• Double-encoded URLs (%2520) mean something was encoded twice. Decode twice to get the original.
• Common codes: %20=space, %26=&, %3D==, %3F=?, %23=#.
• In code: decodeURIComponent() decodes query values, decodeURI() decodes full URLs.