HTML Entity Encoder and Decoder

Enter text to escape special characters, or enter supported entities to convert them back.

What Are HTML Entities?

HTML entities represent certain characters using text sequences. Escaping characters such as angle brackets can help show markup as text in an appropriate HTML context.

How to Escape or Unescape Text

Use the escape panel for plain text or markup, and the unescape panel for supported entity sequences. Review and copy the result from the appropriate panel.

HTML Entity Example

  • <title> → &lt;title&gt;

Using Escaped Text

  • Show a short markup example as text in documentation.
  • Inspect the characters represented by supported entities.
  • Use context-appropriate escaping when inserting untrusted content into an application.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does escaping replace security review?

No. The correct handling depends on whether content is used in HTML text, an attribute, a URL or another context.

Does unescape decode every HTML entity?

No. This tool uses a limited set of common entities; do not assume it decodes the full HTML entity list.