HTML Decode Converter
Turn HTML entities back into the characters they represent.
Escaped HTML
Text
About the HTML Decode converter
Entities like `&`, `—` and ` ` turn up in scraped pages, database exports and API responses that were escaped one time too many. This converter turns them back into real characters.
Named entities, decimal references and hexadecimal references are all recognised.
Double-escaped text
Seeing `&lt;` means the text was escaped twice. Decode once to get `<`, then decode again to get `<`. It is safe to run the converter repeatedly.
Unknown entities
HTML defines well over a thousand named entities. The common ones are handled directly, and anything unrecognised is left exactly as it was rather than being replaced with a question mark — you never silently lose data.
Frequently asked questions
What does become?
A regular space. Non-breaking spaces are usually unwanted once text leaves HTML, so they are normalised.
Is decoding entities safe?
The output here is plain text and is never rendered as markup. But do not insert decoded text back into a page without re-escaping it.