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HTML Entity Decoder
Turn HTML entities back into the characters they represent.
Quick Tool Overview
The HTML Entity Decoder resolves named, decimal and hexadecimal entities back into characters using the browser's own entity table, which covers all 2,231 named entities in the HTML5 specification rather than a hand-written subset.
- What it does
- Decodes HTML entities into plain characters
- You give it
- Text from page source, a feed or a CMS export
- You get back
- The plain text those entities represent
- Best for
- Cleaning scraped content and database exports
About the HTML Entity Decoder
Text pulled out of an HTML source, an RSS feed, a CMS export or a database that stored escaped markup arrives full of & and ' and  . Reading it is annoying; using it anywhere else is worse, because the entities are literal characters.
This decodes all three forms — named entities such as ©, decimal ones such as © and hexadecimal ones such as © — back into the characters they represent, using the browser's own entity table so every one of the 2,000-plus named entities is covered. Double-encoded text, where an ampersand was itself escaped, is detected and can be decoded twice in one go.
Key features of the HTML Entity Decoder
Complete entity coverage
The browser's own parser resolves every named entity, not a partial lookup table.
All three forms
Named, decimal and hexadecimal entities all decode from the same input.
Double encoding detected
& is recognised as text escaped twice, and a second pass is offered.
Safe with untrusted input
Decoding happens in an inert document that never executes scripts or loads resources.
Warns about  
It decodes to a non-breaking space, which looks like a space and is not — the tool says so.
How to use the HTML Entity Decoder
-
1
Paste the escaped text
From page source, an RSS feed, a CMS export or a database column.
-
2
Read the decoded result
Named, decimal and hexadecimal entities all become their characters.
-
3
Check for double encoding
If & appears, the text was escaped twice and a second pass is offered.
-
4
Copy the plain text
Ready to use anywhere that is not HTML.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. It uses the browser's own HTML parser to resolve them, which covers every one of the 2,231 named entities in the HTML5 specification rather than a hand-written subset.
When already-escaped text is escaped again, so & becomes &. It usually means two layers of an application both escaped the same value. The tool detects it and offers a second pass.
Yes. Decoding happens in an inert document that never executes scripts or loads resources, and the result is treated as plain text rather than being rendered.
A non-breaking space (U+00A0), which looks identical to an ordinary space but is a different character. That is why decoded text can still fail an exact match — use Clean Text to normalise it afterwards.
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