URL Decoder
Decode percent-encoded URLs back to readable text.
What Is Percent-Encoding?
Percent-encoding (also called URL encoding) is a way to represent characters that are not allowed or have special meaning in a URL. Each unsafe character is replaced with a % followed by its two-digit hexadecimal ASCII code. For example, a space becomes %20 and a forward slash becomes %2F.
This decoder uses decodeURIComponent, which handles the full range of percent-encoded characters including those in path segments, query strings, and fragment identifiers.
Common Encoded Values
%20 — space %2F — / %3D — = %26 — & %3A — : %3F — ? %40 — @ %23 — # %2B — + (literal plus sign) %22 — "
Where You Encounter Percent-Encoded Strings
Query parameters: When you submit a form or build a URL with user input, the values are percent-encoded. A URL like ?q=hello%20world&lang=en contains the query hello world.
Log files: Web server access logs often record the raw percent-encoded request URI. Paste a log line here to read it clearly.
API requests: REST APIs frequently pass encoded values in path segments or query strings, especially when the data contains special characters like slashes or ampersands.
Redirects: OAuth and SSO redirect URIs are always percent-encoded. Decoding them reveals the destination URL.
decodeURI vs decodeURIComponent
decodeURI only decodes characters that are not reserved in a URI — it leaves %2F, %3F, %23, and similar characters encoded. decodeURIComponent (used here) decodes everything, making it the right choice for individual parameter values rather than full URLs.
If you see an error like "URI malformed", the input contains an invalid sequence such as %zz (non-hex digits) or a lone % with no following digits.
Need more encoding tools? Try the full Encode & Decode suite.