Free HTML Entity Encoder/Decoder

HTML entities prevent special characters from being interpreted as code. This is essential for security (preventing XSS attacks) and for displaying characters like < and & that would otherwise break your HTML.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is an attack where malicious scripts are injected into web pages. By encoding < and > as &lt; and &gt;, injected script tags become harmless text instead of executable code.

Named entities like &amp;nbsp; are memorable but limited to predefined characters. Numeric entities like &amp;#160; can represent any Unicode character using its code point. Both produce the same result.

No, only encode characters that have special meaning in HTML: &, <, >, ", and optionally '. Over-encoding makes your HTML harder to read and is unnecessary for regular text.

&amp;nbsp; is a non-breaking space. Unlike regular spaces, browsers won't collapse multiple nbsp characters or break lines at nbsp positions. Use it to keep words together or add precise spacing.

Yes, most modern frameworks (React, Vue, Angular) automatically encode content inserted into templates. However, you must be careful with "dangerously set innerHTML" and similar features that bypass encoding.