Free HTML Entity Encoder

The HTML Entity Encoder is a free online tool that converts special characters to their HTML entity equivalents and decodes entities back to characters.

Yes, it is completely free with no registration required. All encoding happens client-side in your browser.

HTML entities prevent special characters like <, >, and & from being interpreted as HTML code, ensuring they display correctly on web pages.

Absolutely. The HTML Entity Encoder processes everything client-side in your browser. No data is uploaded to or stored on any server. Your content remains private on your device at all times.

Yes, the HTML Entity Encoder is fully responsive and works on smartphones and tablets. You can use it on any device with a modern web browser -- no app download required.

No account or registration is needed. Simply open the HTML Entity Encoder in your browser and start using it immediately. There are no sign-up walls or usage restrictions.

Simply enter your input in the provided field, adjust any settings to your preference, and the tool will process it instantly. You can then copy the result to your clipboard or download it.

The HTML Entity Encoder works in all modern browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Opera. For the best experience, use the latest version of your preferred browser.

All three are different ways to write the same character, and browsers render them identically. A named entity uses a readable keyword, like &amp; for the ampersand or &copy; for the copyright sign. A decimal (numeric) entity uses the character's Unicode code point in base 10, so the ampersand becomes &#38;. A hexadecimal entity uses that same code point in base 16, written as &#x26;. Named entities are the easiest to read and maintain, but only a limited set of characters have one; decimal and hex work for any character, which makes them safer for unusual symbols. This encoder lets you switch between all three formats with one click, and when a character has no named entity it automatically falls back to a numeric code so your output stays valid.

Five characters carry special meaning in HTML and should be escaped so the browser treats them as text rather than markup: the ampersand (&amp;), the less-than sign (&lt;), the greater-than sign (&gt;), the double quote (&quot;), and the single quote or apostrophe (&#39;). The ampersand must come first when encoding by hand, because it begins every entity itself. Escaping these matters most when you insert user-supplied or dynamic content into a page: an unescaped < can prematurely open a tag, a stray & can break a URL parameter, and unescaped quotes can break out of an attribute value. The encoder's "Special Only" mode targets exactly this set, leaving the rest of your text untouched so the output stays readable. Paste your markup and pick that mode to escape only what HTML actually requires.

Decoding reverses entity codes into the characters they represent, turning &lt;div&gt; back into <div> or &amp;copy; back into the copyright sign. Switch the tool to Decode mode, or simply paste entity-laden text and it auto-detects the direction for you when it sees patterns like &name; or &#26;. The decoder recognizes all three formats in a single pass: named entities such as &mdash;, decimal entities such as &#8212;, and hexadecimal entities such as &#x2014;, even when they are mixed together in the same block. This is useful for reading raw HTML pulled from an API, cleaning up data exported from a CMS, or checking what an encoded string actually says. Paste your encoded text, and the readable result appears instantly in the panel beside it, ready to copy.

Modern pages declared as UTF-8 can display characters like e-acute, the euro sign, or em dashes directly, so escaping every accented letter is usually unnecessary. Encoding non-ASCII characters becomes worthwhile when you cannot guarantee the encoding of the destination, such as older email templates, systems that may strip or mangle UTF-8, or files that must stay strictly ASCII-safe for transport. Converting those characters to entities makes the output portable regardless of how the receiving system handles bytes above code point 127. This tool's "Non-ASCII" mode encodes the required HTML characters plus everything above 127, while "All Symbols" goes further and escapes every non-alphanumeric character. For full control, "Custom" mode lets you name the exact extra characters to escape. Pick the mode that matches your target environment, then copy the portable result.

A single character can expand into several characters once it becomes an entity. The less-than sign is one byte but turns into &lt;, which is four characters, and a copyright sign encoded as a decimal entity like &#169; takes five. The more special or non-ASCII characters your text contains, the larger the encoded output grows, so heavily symbolic or accented content sees the biggest increase while plain alphanumeric text barely changes. This is normal and expected: encoding trades a little size for guaranteed correct, safe rendering. Named entities are often shorter than the numeric equivalents, so choosing the named format can keep output more compact when a name exists. The statistics panel here reports input and output size in bytes and the exact percentage change, so you can see the cost of each format and selective mode before you copy.