URL Decode

Turn percent-encoded URLs and query strings back into readable text.

Encoders & DecodersRuns in your browserFree, no sign-up

Options

Treat + as a space

Correct for HTML form data, wrong for URL paths.

Encoded URL

Decoded

Output appears here as you type.

Ctrl + Enter to run

About the URL Decode

Decoding turns percent-escapes back into the characters they stand for, which is how you read what a URL actually carried. It is the quickest way to make sense of a redirect chain, an OAuth callback, or an analytics parameter that arrived looking like a wall of `%3A%2F%2F`.

Watch for double encoding. A value that was escaped twice decodes to something still full of percent signs, and decoding again gives the real content — that pattern is usually a bug upstream, where a URL was encoded once when constructed and again when embedded.

Frequently asked questions

Why does decoding fail with "malformed percent-encoding"?

A % must be followed by exactly two hexadecimal digits. The error means the input contains something like %zz, a truncated %4, or a literal % that was never encoded — which is itself a common bug in URL-building code.

My URL is encoded twice. What do I do?

Run the decoder twice. Double encoding shows up as %253A (which decodes to %3A, then to :) and usually means a URL was passed through two layers that each encoded it. Decoding repeatedly until the output stops changing is safe.