Encode and decode URLs with percent encoding
URL encoding (also called percent-encoding) replaces unsafe or reserved characters with %HH sequences so a URL can travel through HTTP intact. Different contexts need different levels of encoding: query parameters need aggressive escaping, while a full URL needs structural characters preserved. This tool exposes both variants and handles Unicode correctly so you don't have to reason about UTF-8 byte order manually.
Use Component mode for a single query parameter value — it escapes slashes, colons, and question marks. Use Full URL mode when encoding an entire URL, so structural characters like :// and / stay intact.
A malformed percent sequence like %ZZ (non-hex digits) is invalid UTF-8 and throws. Double-check that every % is followed by exactly two hex digits.
Yes. RFC 3986 calls it percent-encoding; most tooling calls it URL encoding. They're the same thing.
Yes — Unicode characters are UTF-8 encoded first, then percent-encoded per the spec.
%20 is correct per RFC 3986. The + shorthand is only valid for application/x-www-form-urlencoded bodies, not URLs.
