HTML Entities Encoder and Decoder Online — Escape Special Characters
Convert HTML entities
Browse tools
Encode special characters to HTML entities or decode existing entities back to plain text, with named-entity output (&, <, >, ", ' and more) so your markup stays safe and standards-compliant. A searchable entity palette lets you find the right entity by name or glyph, and live mode re-encodes as you type so you can verify the result before pasting into a CMS, RSS feed, or JSON-LD schema block. Use it to prevent XSS in user-generated content and comments, safely embed code snippets and sample XML in tutorials, escape ampersands and angle brackets in XML sitemaps and RSS feeds, and prepare JSON-LD structured data for Google rich results. The decoder also recovers text that has been double-encoded or pasted from a WYSIWYG editor that mangled quotes and dashes. Everything runs 100% locally in your browser — your text, code snippets, and content are never uploaded to a server.
Escape HTML safely for blogs, feeds, and schema markup
Convert <, >, &, and quotation marks into their named equivalents (< > & ") before pasting code samples, technical tutorials, or product names into a CMS — preventing broken markup, failed W3C validation, and XSS vectors from unescaped user content. RSS feeds, XML sitemaps, and JSON-LD schema blocks are particularly intolerant of stray ampersands, and a single one can invalidate an entire product feed in Google Search Console. The searchable reference table covers every named entity you will need.
Local entity lookup with a searchable reference table
Search the full named-entity reference by name or symbol to find the right code for any character — useful when you need — for an em-dash or ’ for a curly apostrophe and do not want to memorize the list. Encoding and decoding run entirely in your browser, so proprietary copy, unpublished product descriptions, and internal documentation never touch a third-party service. Switch between named, decimal, and hex output formats with one toggle.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
HTML entities are special sequences used to represent reserved characters in HTML, such as & for &, < for <, and > for >. They prevent these characters from being interpreted as HTML code.
Yes. The tool supports encoding plain text to HTML entities and decoding HTML entities back to their original characters.
The encoder converts characters that have special meaning in HTML (<, >, &, ", \) to their corresponding named or numeric HTML entities.
No. All encoding and decoding happens entirely in your browser. Your text never leaves your device.
Yes. The decoder can handle both named entities (like &) and numeric entities (like & or &).
Encoding escapes characters that have special meaning in HTML — such as <, >, &, " and ' — into named or numeric entities, so user-generated content cannot be parsed as executable markup. This prevents XSS in comments and reviews, makes it safe to display code snippets in blog posts, and keeps your output compatible with RSS feeds and JSON-LD schema.
Yes. A collapsible reference table lists more than 100 common entities with their rendered glyph and a short description. The search box above the table filters as you type — by entity name, glyph, or description — so you can quickly find the right dash, quote, or arrow and see exactly how it will render before you commit it to your document.
Yes. The encoder offers three output formats: Named (the default, producing &-style names), Decimal (&), and Hex (&). Any character without a named entity — including emoji — automatically falls back to a numeric form. A separate scope option decides whether only the HTML-special and non-ASCII characters are converted, or every single character in the input.