HTML Entity Encoder & Decoder

What Are HTML Entities?

“HTML entities” is the common name for the character references defined by the HTML Living Standard. A conforming reference begins with an ampersand and ends with a semicolon. For example, the less-than sign is written as <, and an ampersand is written as &.

A few characters are reserved in HTML because the browser uses them to build the page. The angle brackets < and > open and close tags, the ampersand & begins every entity, and quotes wrap attribute values. To show those characters as plain text rather than have the browser act on them, you replace each one with its entity. Entities also give you a reliable way to write symbols and Unicode characters that are hard to type, such as © for ©, € for €, or a numeric reference like 😀 for an emoji.

Every entity comes in up to three forms: a named reference such as &, a decimal reference such as &, and a hexadecimal reference such as &. All three render the same character; named entities are the easiest to read, while numeric entities work for any Unicode code point.

Use this page to encode HTML entities, decode HTML entities, see worked conversion examples, review common use cases, check the ampersand entity, or browse the HTML entity reference table.

Encode HTML Entities

HTML encoding converts characters such as &, <, >, quotes, and symbols into entity references. Encoding is useful when text needs to be shown inside markup without being interpreted as markup.

• Named entities: readable values like &, ©, and ♥
• Decimal entities: numeric values like & and ©
• Hexadecimal entities: hex values like & and ©

Start with the HTML entity encoder above, then compare the output against the reference table.

Decode HTML Entities

HTML decoding converts entity references back into readable text. For example, & decodes to &, < decodes to <, and © decodes to ©.

The decoder supports named HTML entities plus decimal and hexadecimal numeric references. This makes it useful for reviewing copied HTML snippets, CMS output, escaped JSON strings, and source text that contains encoded characters.

Decoding can diagnose entities that show up as literal text on a page. If a measured second decoding pass is required, fix the duplicate encoding step at its source. Do not decode repeatedly “until clean”: legitimate entity-like text can be changed, and decoded markup must still be escaped or sanitized for its final rendering context.

Double Encoding, Shown Safely

Double encoding happens when a pipeline escapes text that was already escaped. The examples below are displayed as code; none is inserted as live HTML.

1. Inspect the database or API value and the final HTML source separately.
2. Count the exact number of encoding layers with a known fixture.
3. Remove the duplicate encode operation; prefer raw storage and context-aware escaping at output.
4. Clean persisted values with a backed-up, tested migration that decodes only the measured extra layer.

See the complete double-encoding diagnosis and repair guide.

HTML Entity Examples

These before-and-after examples show how everyday text and symbols look once they are encoded as HTML entities. The left column is what you type; the right column is the encoded output you can paste safely into HTML.

Paste any of these into the encoder above to reproduce the output, then switch to Decode to convert the entities back to their original characters.

Common Use Cases

HTML entity encoding and decoding solves a handful of recurring, real-world problems. Here is when reach for this tool.

Use Framework Escaping Once

Pass raw text to the normal escaped binding. Pre-encoding that same value before the framework renders it is a common route to double encoding. Raw-HTML escape hatches require trusted, sanitized markup.

function Comment({ text }) {
  return <p>{text}</p>;
}

<p>{{ comment }}</p>

<p>{{ comment }}</p>

<p>{{ $comment }}</p>

For language-level functions and browser APIs, see encoding and decoding in JavaScript, PHP, and Python.

Ampersand HTML Entity: &

The ampersand character starts every HTML entity, so a literal ampersand should be encoded as & when it appears in text. The same character can also be written as decimal & or hexadecimal &.

Common examples include brand names, query strings shown as text, and code examples: AT&T displays as AT&T. See the first row of the entity table for the ampersand formats.