HTML Entity Encoder & Decoder
Escape text to HTML entities or decode them back to characters. Nothing is uploaded — everything runs on your device.
Why escape HTML entities?
In HTML, & starts an entity and angle brackets open and close tags, so text containing those characters can be misread as markup. Encoding replaces them with safe references — <, >, & — and turns any non-ASCII character into a numeric reference so it survives copy-paste and encoding mismatches. Decoding reverses it, which is handy when a database or CMS has stored escaped text. The names follow the HTML standard’s character reference table, and anything the decoder does not recognise is left as-is rather than guessed. Related browser-only tools: tidy structured data with the JSON formatter, fix casing with the text case converter, and count a draft with the word counter.
Frequently asked questions
Is my text uploaded anywhere?
No. Encoding and decoding happen in your browser with built-in JavaScript. Your text never leaves your device and nothing is stored between visits.
What is the difference between encoding and decoding?
Encoding turns reserved or non-ASCII characters into HTML entities such as < or é, so they display literally instead of being parsed as markup. Decoding does the reverse, turning entities back into characters.
Which entities does the decoder understand?
Named references such as &, © and , decimal references like ©, and hexadecimal references like ©. Anything it does not recognise is left untouched rather than guessed.
Why escape ampersand and angle brackets?
In HTML, & begins an entity and the angle brackets open and close tags. Writing them as entities is what lets code samples and user text show the characters literally.
Does it handle characters outside the basic alphabet?
Yes. The encoder writes any character above ASCII as a numeric reference, so accented letters, currency signs and symbols survive copy-paste between systems.
Are the entity names standard?
The names used follow the HTML standard's named character reference table, so the output is portable across browsers and tools.