What is the difference between %20 and + for spaces?

%20 is the universal percent-encoding for a space that works in any part of a URL. The + character represents a space only in HTML form query strings (application/x-www-form-urlencoded). Use %20 in path segments.

Which characters are safe in URLs without encoding?

Unreserved characters that never need encoding: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, hyphen (-), underscore (_), period (.), and tilde (~). All other characters should be percent-encoded when used as data values.

How are non-Latin characters encoded in URLs?

Non-ASCII characters are first encoded as UTF-8 bytes, then each byte is percent-encoded. The emoji 👋 is U+1F44B, encoded as the four UTF-8 bytes F0 9F 91 8B, becoming %F0%9F%91%8B.

URL-Encode Special Characters

URL encoding (percent-encoding) converts characters that are not allowed in URLs into a % followed by their hexadecimal ASCII code. Spaces become %20 (or + in query strings), the ampersand & must be encoded in parameter values, and non-ASCII characters like accented letters and emoji require multi-byte UTF-8 encoding. This collection shows the encoded form of the most commonly mishandled characters. Always encode user-supplied values before appending them to URLs to prevent broken links and injection attacks.

Example

# Space
Hello World → Hello%20World

# Special characters in query values
name=John & Jane → name=John%20%26%20Jane
[email protected] → email=user%2Btag%40example.com

# Path with slashes
/files/my document.pdf → /files/my%20document.pdf

# Emoji (UTF-8 multi-byte)
Hello 👋 → Hello%20%F0%9F%91%8B

# Full URL example
https://example.com/search?q=C++ programming&lang=en

[ open in URL Encode → ]

FAQ

What is the difference between %20 and + for spaces?: %20 is the universal percent-encoding for a space that works in any part of a URL. The + character represents a space only in HTML form query strings (application/x-www-form-urlencoded). Use %20 in path segments.
Which characters are safe in URLs without encoding?: Unreserved characters that never need encoding: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, hyphen (-), underscore (_), period (.), and tilde (~). All other characters should be percent-encoded when used as data values.
How are non-Latin characters encoded in URLs?: Non-ASCII characters are first encoded as UTF-8 bytes, then each byte is percent-encoded. The emoji 👋 is U+1F44B, encoded as the four UTF-8 bytes F0 9F 91 8B, becoming %F0%9F%91%8B.

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