HTML Encoder & Decoder

What are HTML Entities?

HTML entities are special sequences that represent characters which have meaning in HTML syntax. For example, the < character starts an HTML tag, so to display it as text you must encode it as <. Similarly, & must be encoded as& because it starts entity references.

There are three formats: named entities (&),decimal entities (&), and hex entities (&). All produce the same output character.

Common HTML Entities Reference

When to Encode vs Decode

Encode when inserting user-supplied text into HTML — form inputs, comments, database content displayed on pages. This prevents Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks.

Decode when you receive HTML-encoded text and need the original characters — for example, parsing RSS feeds, processing API responses, or extracting text from HTML documents.