HTML Entity Encoder / Decoder

HTML entities are special codes that represent characters which have reserved meaning in HTML. The angle brackets < and > define HTML tags, so to display them as literal text you must encode them as < and >. The ampersand & itself becomes &.

Beyond reserved characters, entities are also used for characters not available on a standard keyboard — like © (©), — (—), € (€), and Unicode characters like ♥ (♥). Named entities are easier to read; numeric entities (<) work for any Unicode code point.

Proper encoding prevents XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) attacks where malicious <script> tags are injected into user-generated content. Any user input displayed in HTML should always be entity-encoded first. This tool handles both encoding and decoding for quick reference and testing.