HTML Entities Encoder/Decoder
Encode and decode HTML special characters and entities.
Convert reserved HTML characters into their entity equivalents (& → &) or decode an existing entity-encoded string back to plain text. Supports both named entities and numeric (decimal and hex) forms.
Common use cases: safely embedding user-typed content in templates that don't auto-escape, decoding scraped HTML for processing, prepping snippets for documentation that displays code as text, and inspecting what an old system's entity-encoded output actually says.
Decode
Encode
Frequently asked questions
When do I need to encode HTML entities?
Whenever user-supplied or external text gets rendered as HTML. The five characters that absolutely must be escaped in HTML text content are
&, <, >, " and ' — skipping any of them in a context where they're reserved is how you get broken markup or XSS vulnerabilities.Why are there both named entities (&) and numeric entities (&)?
Named entities are easier to read; numeric (decimal or hex) entities work for any Unicode character. Modern HTML5 has named entities for over 2000 characters, but numeric is universally portable — useful when the recipient parser may be old.
Will this break my emojis or non-Latin characters?
No — only HTML-reserved characters are encoded. Emojis, CJK text, and accented Latin characters pass through unchanged unless you opt into encoding all non-ASCII.
Can this prevent XSS attacks?
Encoding is necessary but not sufficient. You still need to use context-appropriate escaping: HTML body, HTML attribute, JS string, and URL contexts each have different escaping rules. For user input rendered to HTML, prefer a templating engine that escapes by default plus a sanitizer like DOMPurify for HTML that must contain markup.
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