Paste your text
Paste the text or HTML you want to convert.
DEVELOPER TOOLS · FREE ONLINE TOOL
HTML Entity Encoder/Decoder
Convert special characters to HTML entities and backBrowsers treat angle brackets and ampersands as instructions, not text. The moment you want to display code on a page, those characters must become entities, or the browser renders them as markup. This tool converts in both directions.
// HTML ENTITY ENCODER/DECODER · GET STARTED
Use HTML Entity Encoder/Decoder
Convert special characters to HTML entities and back
Advertisement
Advertisement
How to use the HTML Entity Encoder/Decoder
Encode or decode
Choose Encode to entities or Decode entities, and pick named or numeric output when encoding.
Copy the result
Copy the converted result and paste it into your page or editor.
// HTML ENTITY ENCODER/DECODER · ABOUT THIS TOOL
About the HTML Entity Encoder/Decoder
Pasted a code snippet into a CMS and watched the angle brackets disappear? The encoder converts markup-critical characters (and optionally every non-ASCII character) into entities any browser renders as plain text.
The decoder uses the browser built-in HTML parser, so it understands named entities, decimal and hex codes. Handy for cleaning scraped content, reading RSS feeds, or debugging stray & text.
Where it helps most
Where encoding earns its keep.
Publishing tutorials
Anyone writing tutorials or docs with code samples needs this step, or their examples will execute instead of displaying.
XSS defense
Escaping user-supplied content before inserting it into HTML turns a would-be script tag into harmless visible text.
Legacy content rescue
Scraped or legacy content that arrives entity-encoded becomes readable again with one quick decode pass.
CMS code blocks
Blog posts with code samples pasted into a CMS need entities so the code displays instead of running.
What gets converted
The characters that matter.
The big five
Less-than, greater-than, ampersand and both quotes become <, >, &, " and ' for safe display.
Both entity formats
The decoder handles named entities and numeric ones, so © and © both resolve correctly.
UTF-8 note
Modern UTF-8 pages need entities less often; only the five HTML-significant characters strictly require encoding.
HTML Entity Encoder/Decoder: private by design
Conversion runs entirely in your browser. Nothing uploaded, no signup needed.
HTML Entity Encoder/Decoder FAQs
At minimum the less-than, greater-than, and ampersand characters, since browsers interpret them as markup. Double and single quotes should also be encoded when they appear inside attribute values. Most other characters, including accented letters and symbols, can stay as plain UTF-8 in modern pages.
tools-guide
Hosting Provider Checker: Who Hosts Any Website
Free hosting provider checker. Reveal any website's hosting company accurately, server IP and reverse DNS from header and DNS fingerprints, in seconds.
Read article →
tools-guide
CMS Detector: Find What Powers Any Website
Free CMS detector. Detect WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Joomla, Drupal and more from code fingerprints. Perfect for competitor research and client website audits.
Read article →