Online Encoding Tools — Base64, Hex, URL, Base58 & Base32 Converter

Choose the encoding format based on what you need to do.

• Base64: Standard for email, web, and JSON. Uses A-Z, a-z, 0-9, +, /.
• Base64URL: URL-safe variant. Uses - and _ instead of + and /.
• Base58: Best for Bitcoin addresses and IPFS. Removes confusing characters (0, O, I, l) for human readability.
• Base32: Case-insensitive, RFC 4648 compliant. Uses A-Z, 2-7. Great for spoken or typed codes.

Your choice should match what the downstream system expects.

URL encoding (also called percent-encoding) replaces reserved characters with %XX hexadecimal codes. This lets you safely transmit them in URLs without breaking the URI structure.

For example, a space becomes %20, an ampersand becomes %26, and a hash becomes %23.

You need URL encoding whenever you build API requests, submit forms, create redirect URLs, or embed values in query parameters. It is required by RFC 3986 for valid URIs. JavaScript's encodeURIComponent() handles this automatically.

ASCII85 (Adobe Base85) encodes 4 bytes of binary data into 5 ASCII characters. It is more space-efficient than Base64, which encodes 4 bytes into 8 characters.

You will find ASCII85 in PostScript files, PDF documents, and git binary patches. Z85 (ZeroMQ) is a variant with a different alphabet designed for safe transport in text protocols.

Yes, you can. Just paste any text (UTF-8) data, and the tools will encode or decode it.

All formats — Base64, Base32, Base58, Hex, and ASCII85 — operate on your text, which is converted to UTF-8 bytes before encoding. For large inputs, the performance depends on your browser's memory.

Use Hex when you need human-readable binary data for debugging, checksums, or protocol inspection. Each byte maps to exactly two hex digits, which makes it easy to read and compare.

Use Base64 when space efficiency matters. Base64 encodes 3 bytes into 4 characters (33% overhead), while Hex has 100% overhead (doubling the size).

Hex is the standard for hash digests, MAC addresses, and file signatures. Base64 is preferred for embedding binary data in JSON, email attachments, and PEM certificates.

Standard Base64 uses + and /, which have special meaning in URLs. Base64URL replaces + with - and / with _, and removes the = padding.

You should use Base64URL for JWT tokens, URL parameters, and anywhere the encoded output will appear in a URL.

Use Base32 when case-insensitivity matters. Common use cases include TOTP secrets (Google Authenticator, RFC 6238), DNSSEC key identifiers, license keys, and invite codes that users may read aloud or type manually.

Its alphabet (A-Z, 2-7) avoids visually confusing characters like 0, 1, 8, 9. Base32 has roughly 60% overhead, but case-insensitive transmission makes it safer for DNS, Windows file systems, and spoken communication.

ASCII85 (Adobe Base85) is the original variant used in PostScript and PDF. It encodes 4 bytes into 5 printable ASCII characters with about 25% overhead. It uses <~ and ~> delimiters and compresses runs of 4 zero bytes to a single z.

Z85 (RFC 9284, ZeroMQ) uses a different alphabet that avoids quoting issues in JSON and source code. It removes delimiters for message framing and is safer for transport in text protocols.

Python's b85encode is similar to Adobe but without delimiters.

Choose Adobe for PDF and PostScript compatibility, Z85 for network transport in ZeroMQ or custom protocols, and Python b85encode for scripting.

It is called URL encoding because it originated in RFC 1738 (1994) for URLs. Reserved characters are represented as % followed by two hex digits.

RFC 3986 (2005) modernized the standard. It defines which characters must be encoded in each URI component — path, query, and fragment.

Historically, spaces in URLs caused parsing errors. This led to %20 for paths and + for query strings (from application/x-www-form-urlencoded).

Watch out for double-encoding: encoding an already-encoded %20 produces %2520. The server sees %20 instead of a space. Modern APIs like URL in JavaScript handle encoding automatically, but manual construction still causes bugs.