Convert & Encode Tools
Base64, URL encoding and text-to-PDF conversion, all private and in your browser.
Encoding is not encryption. Everything in this category is a reversible, public transformation: the same text expressed in a different alphabet, so it can survive a journey through a system that would otherwise mangle it. Base64 exists so binary data can travel through channels that only accept text. URL encoding exists so a space or an ampersand does not break a link. Anyone can decode any of it — that is the point, and the reason none of it protects anything.
Which encoder do you need?
- Base64 Encode / Decode
- You need to embed data in JSON, a data URI, a config file or an email header — or read something that arrived encoded.
- URL Encode / Decode
- A link contains spaces, accents, ampersands or slashes that break it, or you want to read a mangled URL.
- HTML Encode / Decode
- Text with angle brackets or ampersands has to appear literally on a page instead of being parsed as markup.
- Strip HTML Tags
- You copied a chunk of markup and only want the readable text out of it.
- Text to Binary
- You want to see the actual bits behind characters — usually for teaching, homework or curiosity.
- Binary to Text
- You have a string of ones and zeros to turn back into readable characters.
- Text to Hex
- You need hexadecimal byte values, the format most debuggers and protocol docs speak in.
- Hex to Text
- You are reading a hex dump, a log or a packet capture and want the characters back.
- Morse Code Translator
- You are converting to or from Morse — for a puzzle, a lesson, or an amateur radio exercise.
- ROT13 Encoder
- You want to hide a spoiler or a punchline from casual reading, not from anyone who cares.
- Caesar Cipher
- You are learning or teaching how classical substitution ciphers work.
- Roman Numeral Converter
- You need a year, a chapter number or a clock face in Roman numerals, or read back from them.
Base64 makes data bigger, not safer
Base64 represents every three bytes using four printable characters, which is why encoded data is always about a third larger than what went in. It exists because plenty of systems — email bodies, JSON strings, URLs, config files — accept text but corrupt raw binary. Encoding an image or a file into Base64 lets it ride through those channels intact. What it emphatically does not do is conceal anything: any decoder reverses it instantly, and a Base64 string is recognisable on sight by its alphabet and trailing equals signs. Passwords and keys pasted as Base64 into a config file are stored in plain sight, and treating that as security is one of the more common and costly misunderstandings in this category.
URL encoding exists because some characters have jobs
In a URL, certain characters mean something structural: ? starts the query string, & separates parameters, / separates path segments, # marks a fragment. If your actual data contains one of those, it has to be escaped as a percent sign followed by its hex byte value, or the link will be parsed wrongly and silently break. A space becomes %20, an ampersand becomes %26. This is also why accented characters and non-Latin scripts appear as long percent sequences: they are encoded as UTF-8 bytes first, and one character can become several escapes. Decoding a URL back is often the fastest way to see what a tracking-laden link is actually carrying.
HTML encoding is what prevents text from becoming markup
If you put < or & directly into a page, the browser tries to interpret them as the start of a tag or an entity. Encoding them as < and & makes them display literally instead. This is more than cosmetic: unescaped user input is the mechanism behind cross-site scripting, where text someone typed gets executed as code because it was inserted into a page without escaping. Encoding on output is the standard defence, and it is why any code sample containing tags has to be encoded before it can be shown on a web page.
ROT13 and Caesar ciphers are toys, deliberately
A Caesar cipher shifts every letter a fixed number of places, and ROT13 is the special case of shifting by thirteen — which makes it its own inverse, so encoding and decoding are the same operation. Both are trivially broken: with only twenty-five possible shifts, trying them all takes a second, and letter frequency analysis identifies the right one without even that. Their genuine uses are educational and social: they are the clearest possible illustration of what a substitution cipher is, and on forums ROT13 has long been the convention for hiding a spoiler from someone scrolling past. Anything that actually needs protecting needs real cryptography.
Frequently asked questions
Is Base64 a form of encryption?
No. It is a public, reversible encoding with no key. Anyone can decode it instantly. Use it to transport data safely through text-only channels, never to protect it.
Why is my encoded data larger than the original?
Base64 uses four characters for every three bytes, so expect roughly a 33% increase. That is inherent to the scheme.
When do I need URL encoding?
Whenever a value inside a link contains a character with structural meaning — a space, &, ?, /, #, + — or any non-ASCII character. Without it, the URL is parsed wrongly.
Is my data sent to a server to be encoded?
No. Every conversion here runs in your browser, which matters given how often people encode tokens, keys and payloads while debugging.