HTML Entity Encoder & Decoder — Free Online
Encode and decode HTML entities instantly with this free online tool. Escape special characters to prevent XSS and display issues. No sign-up required.
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What are HTML Entities?
HTML entities are special sequences used to represent reserved characters in HTML. Characters like the less-than sign, greater-than sign, ampersand, and double quote have special meaning in HTML syntax — for example, the less-than sign opens a tag and the ampersand starts a character reference. If you want to display these characters as literal text on a web page, you must replace them with their entity equivalents (e.g. the 'lt' entity for less-than, 'gt' for greater-than, 'amp' for ampersand, and 'quot' for double quotes). Failing to encode these characters can break page rendering or, worse, create Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities when user input is rendered as HTML. Entity encoding is also used for characters not available on the keyboard, such as the copyright symbol (©), euro sign (€), and em dash (—).
How to Use This Free Online HTML Entity Encoder & Decoder
- Select the mode: 'Encode' to convert special characters to HTML entities, or 'Decode' to convert entities back to readable characters.
- Paste or type your HTML content into the input field.
- The converted result appears instantly in the output field — no button click needed.
- Click the Copy button to copy the result to your clipboard.
Common Use Cases for HTML Entity Encoding
- Preventing XSS attacks — Encode user-supplied input before rendering it in HTML to neutralize script injection attempts and prevent Cross-Site Scripting vulnerabilities.
- Displaying code snippets on web pages — When showing HTML source code in a tutorial or documentation page, encode the tags so the browser renders them as text instead of interpreting them.
- Embedding special characters in HTML attributes — Characters like double quotes and ampersands inside attribute values must be encoded to avoid breaking the attribute syntax.
- Debugging encoded HTML content — Decode HTML entities to inspect the original characters when troubleshooting rendering issues or reviewing sanitized output from a CMS.