[Online Tool] What Is %E4%B8%AD%E6%96%87 in a URL? URL Encode and Decode Tool

Copy a URL with Chinese query parameters, paste it somewhere, and you often get something like this:

https://example.com/search?q=%E4%B8%AD%E6%96%87%E5%85%B3%E9%94%AE%E8%AF%8D

A wall of %XX sequences that tell you nothing. This is URL encoding — the format browsers and servers use to safely transmit special characters.

Toolshu's URL Encoder / Decoder decodes it back to readable text in one click, and can also encode any text into URL format.

🔗 Tool URL: https://toolshu.com/en/urlencode

Why Does a URL Contain %XX?

URLs can only contain a limited set of ASCII characters. Chinese characters, spaces, &, =, #, and other special characters would cause ambiguity or transmission errors if used directly in a URL — so they're converted to a % followed by two hexadecimal digits.

For example:

• Chinese character 「中」→ %E4%B8%AD
• Space → %20 or +
• & → %26

This conversion is called URL encoding, or Percent-encoding.

Two Encoding Modes

Encode URI component (encodeURIComponent / decodeURIComponent): Encodes a single parameter value — escapes all special characters including &, =, /, and ?. Use this when handling individual query parameter values.

Encode full URI (encodeURI / decodeURI): Preserves URL structural characters (/, :, ?, &, =, etc.) and only encodes non-ASCII characters and spaces. Use this when encoding an entire URL string.

Switch between modes with one click based on what you need.

Common Use Cases

Reading logs and API data: Request parameters in API logs are often percent-encoded. Paste them in, decode, and immediately see what was actually transmitted.

Constructing request parameters: When writing scrapers or calling APIs, encode Chinese characters or special characters into valid URL parameters.

Debugging frontend issues: If page navigation parameters aren't being passed correctly, decode them first to verify the raw values are right.

Related Tools

All in the encoding category: Base64 Encoder/Decoder (https://toolshu.com/en/base64) handles binary-to-text representation; Unicode Converter (https://toolshu.com/en/unicode) handles Chinese characters and Unicode escape sequences. Each covers a different encoding scenario.

👉 Decode your URL now: https://toolshu.com/en/urlencode

Toolshu Online Tools — toolshu.com — no need to remember encoding syntax. Just use the tool.