HTML Encoder / Decoder
Convert special characters to HTML entities for safe web display, or decode entities back to readable text. Essential for preventing XSS vulnerabilities and displaying code snippets.
HTML Encoder / Decoder — Escape & Unescape HTML Entities Free: Free HTML Encoder / Decoder tool: encode special characters to HTML entities or decode HTML entities back to text. Prevent XSS attacks and display code.
How to Encode and Decode HTML
Paste Your Content
Enter HTML code you need to make display-safe, or paste encoded entities you want to convert back to readable text.
Encode or Decode
Click Encode to convert characters like <, >, &, and quotes to their HTML entity equivalents. Click Decode to reverse.
Copy the Result
Copy the output for use in your web pages, blog posts, documentation, or code tutorials. The entities will display as literal characters in browsers.
What Is HTML Encoding?
HTML encoding (also called HTML escaping) is the process of replacing characters that have special meaning in
HTML with their entity equivalents. The less-than symbol < becomes <, the
greater-than symbol > becomes >, the ampersand & becomes &,
and quotes become " or '.
Without encoding, browsers interpret these characters as HTML markup rather than displaying them literally.
If you write <script>alert('hacked')</script> in a comment field without encoding,
the browser may actually execute that JavaScript. This is the foundation of Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
attacks — one of the most common web security vulnerabilities. Proper HTML encoding neutralizes these
attacks by converting the markup into harmless display text.
Developers encounter this constantly when building content management systems, comment sections, code documentation, and any application that displays user-generated content. Every piece of user input that gets rendered in HTML must be encoded first, without exception. Frameworks like React and Angular encode by default, but if you're working with vanilla JavaScript or server-side templates, manual encoding is essential.
The reverse operation — decoding — is useful when you've received already-encoded content and need to work with the original text. This happens frequently when parsing RSS feeds, processing API responses, or migrating content between systems that handle encoding differently.
Why Use Our HTML Encoder?
XSS Prevention
Encode all special characters that could be interpreted as HTML markup. This is the first line of defense against injection attacks in web applications.
Entity Counter
See exactly how many characters were converted to entities. Useful for understanding the encoding overhead and verifying thorough conversion.
Bidirectional
Encode and decode in the same interface. The Swap button lets you instantly verify round-trip conversion — encode then decode should always match your original.
Complete Coverage
Handles all five critical HTML characters: less-than, greater-than, ampersand, double-quote, and single-quote. These cover all HTML injection vectors.
Frequently Asked Questions
Browsers parse everything between HTML tags as markup by default. If you put
<b>hello</b> in a web page, the browser renders "hello" in bold — it
doesn't show the tags. Encoding converts the angle brackets to entities
(<b>) so the browser displays the characters literally instead of
interpreting them as markup.
No — they serve different purposes. HTML encoding converts characters that are special in HTML markup (angle brackets, ampersands). URL encoding converts characters that are special in URLs (spaces, ampersands, non-ASCII characters). They use completely different encoding schemes. We have a separate URL Encoder tool for that.
React and Vue automatically escape content rendered through JSX expressions and template
interpolation. You generally don't need manual encoding with these frameworks. However, if
you're using dangerouslySetInnerHTML (React) or v-html (Vue), you
bypass that protection and need to handle encoding yourself.
The decoder handles all standard named HTML entities. The encoder focuses on the five security-critical characters. If you need to insert specific entities like non-breaking spaces or em dashes, you can type them directly — the encoder only transforms characters that could create HTML parsing ambiguity or security vulnerabilities.
HTML encoding prevents HTML injection, which is the most common XSS vector. However, comprehensive XSS prevention also requires proper output encoding for different contexts (JavaScript strings, CSS values, URL attributes) and Content Security Policy headers. HTML encoding is necessary but not always sufficient — it's one layer in a defense-in-depth strategy.