Base64

Base64 writes any data using only letters, digits, + and /, so it can travel safely through systems built for plain text, such as email, JSON and web addresses. It is an encoding, not encryption: anyone can decode it, so never use it to hide a secret. Text is converted as UTF-8 first, so accents and emoji survive the round trip, which the simple browser function btoa gets wrong.

URL-safe Base64 swaps + and / for - and _ so the result can sit inside a link, and often drops the = padding. When decoding, either form is accepted.

URL encoding

URL (percent) encoding replaces characters that can’t appear in a link with a % and two hex digits: a space becomes %20 and é becomes %C3%A9. Choose Part of a link for a single value such as a search term, where &, = and / must be escaped too. Choose Whole address to encode a complete link while leaving its :, /, ? and # alone. Form style is what HTML forms send, with a + for each space.

Questions

Why does decoding say the result is binary? The Base64 was made from a file or image, not from text. This page only shows text results.

Is my text uploaded? No, everything runs in your browser and nothing is saved.

Need a hash instead? See the Hash Generator.