URL decoder
What this URL decoder does
Turn percent-encoded text back into the literal characters humans expect—for example caf%C3%A9 becomes café, and query snippets reveal whether + stood for a space. Paste either the whole encoded segment or a copied parameter value when logs collapse tricky redirects into escaped gibberish.
When to use it
Use it when auditing OAuth return URLs, dissecting ad-tech redirect chains, or reading CDN access logs where Unicode slug paths were normalized aggressively. After decoding, re-encode with URL encoder if you need a canonical comparison, and follow multi-hop behavior with URL redirect checker when platforms nest tracking wrappers.
Worked example
A webhook arrives with description=Budget%20%2B%20timeline. Decoding shows the original plus sign intent (Budget + timeline), proving the partner encoded correctly while your parser mistakenly split on raw + as space.
Frequently asked questions
Why does + confuse me?
Application/x-www-form-urlencoded treats + as space; percent-encoding uses %20. Know which rules your server applies.
Can I decode an entire URL?
Whole-string decoding may break legitimate percent signs inside paths. Often decode per component after parsing the URL structure.
Malformed sequences?
Lone % or incomplete hex pairs indicate truncation or double decoding attempts—compare against the original transport bytes.