URL Decode

Decode percent-encoded URLs back to human-readable text — supports %XX encoding and + as space.

What is URL Decoding?

URL decoding (percent-decoding) converts percent-encoded sequences back to their original characters. When you see a URL like https://example.com/search?q=hello%20world%26more, the %20 represents a space and %26 represents an ampersand — the URL decoder converts these back to their human-readable form.

URL decoding is essential when debugging web applications, reading log files, analyzing HTTP traffic, working with form submissions, and inspecting API requests. Browser developer tools, proxy tools like Charles, and server log files all present URLs in their encoded form — decoding them makes them immediately readable.

This tool also parses the query string of a URL into its individual key-value parameters, displaying them in a clean table format. This makes it easy to inspect complex API request URLs, OAuth redirect URIs, and tracking parameters without manually splitting on & and = characters.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my URL have %2F, %3A etc?
%2F is a slash (/), %3A is a colon (:), %3F is a question mark (?), %23 is a hash (#), %26 is an ampersand (&), %3D is an equals sign (=). These are the most common percent-encoded characters in URLs. This decoder will convert them all back to their original characters.
What does "malformed URI" error mean?
This occurs when a % sign is not followed by exactly two valid hexadecimal digits. For example, %GG or a lone % at the end of a string. Check that your input is a complete, valid percent-encoded URL segment.
Should I decode + as space?
Only if the URL came from an HTML form submission (application/x-www-form-urlencoded), where spaces are encoded as +. In standard URL encoding, + is a literal plus sign. When in doubt, check the Content-Type of the request that generated the URL.

Related Tools

URL Encode Encoding Tools Base64 Decode Encoding Tools HTML Decode Encoding Tools HTTP Header Analyzer Encoding Tools cURL Generator Encoding Tools