Is HTML decoding the same as unescaping?

Yes. HTML decoding and unescaping are synonymous - both convert entities like < back to their original characters. It's the reverse of HTML encoding/escaping.

Does this handle malformed entities?

The browser's built-in parser handles most malformed entities gracefully - incomplete entities like &amp without ; are left as-is, while valid entities are decoded correctly.

HTML Decoder - Decode HTML Entities Online

Decode HTML entities to plain text instantly. Convert & < > and numeric codes. Free, private, works offline.

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Encoded HTML

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Decoded Text

Common HTML Entities

Entity	Character	Description
`&`	&	Ampersand
`<`	<	Less than
`>`	>	Greater than
`"`	"	Double quote
`'`	'	Single quote
` `	(space)	Non-breaking space
`©`	©	Copyright
`®`	®	Registered
`<`	<	Decimal entity
`<`	<	Hex entity

HTML Special Characters Reference & Enco…

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Frequently Asked Questions

HTML entities are codes like & for &, < for <, used to display special characters in HTML safely. They prevent browsers from interpreting characters as HTML tags or breaking document structure.

Named entities ( , ©), decimal entities (&, ©), and hexadecimal entities (&, ©). The decoder handles all standard HTML5 entities plus legacy HTML4 entities.

To convert encoded content back to readable text, process data that was HTML-escaped for storage, extract clean text from HTML sources, or prepare content for non-HTML display like PDFs or plain text.

Yes. HTML decoding and unescaping are synonymous - both convert entities like < back to their original characters. It's the reverse of HTML encoding/escaping.

HTML encoding converts characters to entities for safe display - it's reversible by design and provides no security. Encryption scrambles data to protect it and requires a key to decrypt.

Yes. Numeric entities like é (é), 😀 (emoji), and UTF-8 sequences are properly decoded to their Unicode characters, supporting all languages and symbols.

Double-encoding (like &amp;) requires running the decoder twice. Each pass removes one layer of encoding. This often happens when content is encoded multiple times by different systems.

The browser's built-in parser handles most malformed entities gracefully - incomplete entities like & without ; are left as-is, while valid entities are decoded correctly.

Yes, but this tool decodes entities only - it doesn't parse HTML structure. For viewing rendered HTML, use your browser. This is ideal for extracting text content from HTML.

Yes. All decoding happens in your browser using JavaScript's native DOM parser. No data is sent to any server - your content remains completely private and secure.

Common HTML Entities

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