HTML entities are special codes used to represent characters that have a reserved meaning in HTML, or characters that cannot be typed directly. For example, the < character would be interpreted as the start of an HTML tag, so it must be written as &lt; to appear as a literal less-than sign in a web page.

HTML encoding is essential for security and correctness. If user-provided text is inserted into an HTML page without encoding, characters like <, >, and " can break the HTML structure or be exploited for cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. Proper HTML encoding ensures text is displayed literally rather than interpreted as HTML.

A regular space in HTML is just a space character. The HTML entity &nbsp; represents a non-breaking space — a space that prevents a line break from occurring at that point and ensures browsers do not collapse multiple spaces into one. Use &nbsp; when you need a space that will always render.

Switch to Decode mode and paste your HTML-encoded text. The tool converts HTML entities like &amp;, &lt;, &gt;, &quot;, &#039;, and named entities back to their original characters. Decoding is performed entirely in your browser — no data is sent to any server.

HTML encoding converts characters to HTML entities (e.g., & → &amp;) for safe insertion into HTML documents. URL encoding converts characters to percent-encoded sequences (e.g., & → %26) for safe inclusion in URLs. They serve different contexts: HTML encoding is for HTML content, URL encoding is for URL query strings and paths.