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HTML Escape / Unescape Tool
Convert special characters to HTML entities so they display as text, or decode entities back into normal characters.
How to use the HTML Escape/Unescape Tool
Paste text or code into the input. Escape replaces the five characters that have special meaning in HTML: & becomes &, < becomes <, > becomes >, a double quote becomes " and a single quote becomes '. Unescape reverses this and also understands numeric entities and named ones such as ©.
Escaping is what lets you display a snippet of code on a web page, or put user-supplied text inside HTML without it being treated as markup.
Examples and uses
<a href="x">Tom & Jerry</a> escapes to <a href="x">Tom & Jerry</a>.
Limitations and good to know
Escaping for HTML text and attribute values is covered here; it is not a substitute for proper escaping in JavaScript, CSS or URLs, which have different rules. Unescaping works on plain text only: any tags in the input are never created as elements, so nothing is executed. Do not escape text twice unless you intend to, as that produces visible entities like &lt;.
Frequently asked questions
Why escape HTML?
So characters like < and & are treated as text, not markup. It prevents broken layouts and is a core defence against cross-site scripting.
Is unescaping safe?
Yes. Decoding is done without creating any elements, so scripts in the input are only returned as text.
Should I escape every character?
No. Escaping the five special characters is normally enough. The non-ASCII option is only for systems that need pure ASCII output.
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