🔤 HTML Entities Encoder / Decoder

Named Entities
Decimal (&#NNN;)
Hex (&#xHHH;)
Minimal (<>")
Input
OutputNamed Entities
Common HTML Entities Reference
&&amp;
<&lt;
>&gt;
"&quot;
'&apos;
©&copy;
®&reg;
™&trade;
&nbsp;
—&mdash;
–&ndash;
€&euro;
£&pound;
¥&yen;
←&larr;
→&rarr;

About HTML Entities Encoder/Decoder

HTML entities are special sequences of characters used in HTML to represent reserved characters, symbols, and characters that cannot be directly typed or displayed in web pages. For example, the less-than sign (<) must be written as < in HTML to prevent the browser from interpreting it as the start of a tag. Similarly, the ampersand (&) is encoded as &, quotes as " or ', and non-ASCII characters like © are represented as ©. HTML entities serve two critical purposes: they ensure that special characters are displayed correctly in the browser, and they prevent security vulnerabilities such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks by neutralizing potentially harmful HTML or JavaScript code in user input. Our HTML Entities Encoder/Decoder tool allows you to instantly convert between plain text and HTML-encoded text, making it invaluable for web developers, content managers, and security-conscious applications that handle user-generated content.

How to Use This Tool

  1. Paste the text you want to encode into the input area. This can be any text containing special characters that need to be escaped for HTML — angle brackets (< >), ampersands (&), quotes (' '), or any Unicode characters that need to be represented as entities. If you have HTML source code that you want to display as text on a webpage (rather than having the browser render it), paste the entire HTML code into the encoder. The tool will convert all special characters to their corresponding HTML entity references.
  2. Select the encoding mode that suits your needs. The tool typically offers several options: encode all special characters (recommended for security), encode only the five essential XML entities (< > & ' "), or encode non-ASCII characters only. For maximum security when handling user input, use the full encoding mode which converts every character that has an HTML entity equivalent. For displaying code snippets on a webpage, encoding angle brackets and ampersands is usually sufficient. Choose the mode that balances readability with security requirements.
  3. Click the 'Encode' or 'Decode' button to process your text. The result appears instantly in the output area, ready to be copied to your clipboard. When decoding, the tool converts all HTML entity references back to their original characters, so <div> becomes
    . You can also use the swap button to quickly move the output back to the input for further processing. This is particularly useful when you need to round-trip text through multiple encoding/decoding operations or when debugging entity-related issues in your HTML.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why do I need to encode HTML entities?

A: HTML entities are necessary because certain characters have special meaning in HTML. The characters <, >, &, ', and " are used to define HTML tags, attributes, and entity references. If these characters appear in your content without encoding, the browser will try to interpret them as HTML markup, potentially breaking your page layout or, worse, enabling XSS attacks if the content comes from untrusted sources. Encoding these characters ensures they are treated as plain text and displayed as-is to the user.

Q: What is the difference between named entities and numeric entities?

A: Named entities use descriptive names like < (less than), > (greater than), & (ampersand), and © (copyright symbol). They are more readable and easier to remember. Numeric entities use decimal (<) or hexadecimal (C;) references to the character's Unicode code point. Named entities only exist for a predefined set of common characters (approximately 250), while numeric entities can represent any Unicode character. For example, the euro symbol € can be written as € (named), € (decimal), or € (hexadecimal). All three produce the same result.

Q: Is HTML encoding the same as URL encoding?

A: No, they are different encoding schemes used for different purposes. HTML encoding replaces special characters with entity references (<, >, &) so they display correctly in HTML documents. URL encoding (also called percent encoding) replaces characters with %XX sequences (e.g., %3C for <, %3E for >) so they can be safely transmitted in URLs and query parameters. Both serve to make special characters safe in their respective contexts, but the syntax and use cases are completely different. Using one in place of the other will not work correctly.