HTML Entity Converter
Encode and decode HTML entities. Free, no signup.
How It Works
Paste text and click Encode to convert the characters that have structural meaning in HTML — &, <, and > — into their entity equivalents. Click Decode to reverse the process: the browser's own parser resolves every named and numeric entity back into its character. Useful for safely embedding content in HTML or cleaning up escaped text you copied from a page.
What Are HTML Entities?
HTML entities are special codes that represent characters that have meaning in HTML syntax. For example, < represents < and & represents &. Using entities prevents the browser from interpreting text as HTML tags or attributes, and lets you display symbols that are hard to type or that would otherwise be swallowed by the markup.
Common HTML Entities
| Character | Named entity | Numeric entity |
|---|---|---|
| & | & | & |
| < | < | < |
| > | > | > |
| " | " | " |
| ' | ' | ' |
| (non-breaking space) | |   |
| © | © | © |
Decode recognises all of these; Encode replaces the ampersand, less-than, and greater-than characters, which is what you need to make text safe in HTML body content.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I convert text to HTML entities?
Paste your text in the input box and click Encode. The tool replaces the characters that have special meaning in HTML — the ampersand, the less-than sign, and the greater-than sign — with their entity codes so the text can be embedded safely in a page.
How do I decode HTML entities back to plain text?
Paste text that contains entities and click Decode. The browser resolves every named and numeric entity, so codes like &amp;, &lt;, &quot;, &nbsp;, and &#169; turn back into their real characters in the output box.
What is the difference between encoding and decoding?
Encoding turns raw characters into safe entity codes so a browser shows them as text instead of interpreting them as markup. Decoding does the reverse, converting entity codes back into the characters they represent.
Is my text uploaded or stored anywhere?
No. Both encoding and decoding happen in your browser using the page's own HTML parser. Nothing is sent to a server, saved, or logged, so it is safe for private or sensitive text.
Why do I only need to escape the ampersand, less-than, and greater-than signs?
Those are the characters that break HTML structure or start a tag or entity, so encoding them is enough to display text safely. Quotes only need escaping inside attribute values; decoding still recognises quote and every other entity.