Developers
HTML Entities Encoder
<, &, " — HTML special characters encoded and decoded cleanly.
Displaying a code snippet inside a page, inserting text that contains “<” or “&” without breaking the markup, or untangling content full of &eacute; pulled from an old feed: HTML entities are an unavoidable part of web work. This tool converts both ways, live: special characters become safe entities when encoding, and both named and numeric entities (&amp;, &#38;, &#x26;) turn back into readable characters when decoding. Paste, convert, copy — all inside your browser, with no content ever transmitted to a server. Free, no sign-up, no usage limits, and it handles large blocks of markup without breaking a sweat.
How does it work?
- Paste your text or HTML into the input area.
- Click “Encode” to protect special characters, or “Decode” to restore them.
- The result appears instantly.
- Copy it with one click.
Frequently asked questions
Why do <, > and & need encoding in HTML?
Because they are the language’s structural characters: an unencoded “<” opens a tag, an “&” starts an entity. Left unescaped inside content, they break rendering at best — and open the door to XSS injection at worst, when the content comes from users. Encoding them neutralises interpretation.
Why does &amp; show up literally on my page?
That is double encoding: already-encoded text was encoded a second time, often by a CMS or template that auto-escapes. The “&” of “&amp;” became “&amp;amp;”. Decode it here once to get clean text back, then make sure only one escaping layer remains in your publishing chain.
Named or numeric entities — which should I use?
Both are valid: &eacute; and &#233; produce the same “é”. Named entities are more readable but the list is finite; numeric ones cover all of Unicode. In practice, on UTF-8 pages, only &lt;, &gt;, &amp; and &quot; are still genuinely necessary.
Do I still need to encode accented characters (é, ü, ñ)?
No — not since pages started being served as UTF-8: “é” can sit in the HTML as-is. Entities like &eacute; date from the era of unreliable encodings. Reserve encoding for structural characters — and decode legacy entity-riddled content to recover clean, readable text.