Base64 encoder & decoder
Encode text, decode it back, or turn a small image into a data URI you can paste straight into your CSS.
Your text
Everything runs in your browser.
Output
How to use this base64 encoder & decoder
- Choose whether to encode or decode.
- Type or paste your input, or choose an image to make a data URI.
- Copy or download the result.
Who it is for
For developers working with APIs, email templates and embedded images, including text in non-English scripts.
What Base64 actually is
It is a way of writing any data using only 64 safe characters — letters, digits, plus and slash. That lets binary data travel through systems that only accept text: email attachments, JSON fields, data URIs in CSS.
Two things people get wrong
- It is not encryption. Anyone can decode it instantly — this page does it without a password. Never use it to hide an API key or a token.
- It makes data bigger, not smaller. Every 3 bytes become 4 characters, so everything grows by roughly 33%. It is a transport format, not compression.
The UTF-8 trap
The browser's built-in btoa() throws an error on anything outside Latin-1 —
including the pound sign in some contexts, accented letters, Indian scripts and every emoji. A lot of
online Base64 tools either crash or quietly corrupt the text.
This one encodes to UTF-8 bytes first, so ₹, café and
emoji all survive the round trip intact.
When a data URI is worth it
Embedding an image directly in your CSS or HTML saves one network request. That is genuinely useful for a tiny icon or a 1×1 spacer.
It stops being useful fast. A data URI is about a third larger than the file, it cannot be cached separately from the page, and it blocks rendering while it is parsed. Under about 5KB, embed. Over 10KB, link.
URL-safe Base64
Standard Base64 uses + and /, which both have meaning inside a URL. The
URL-safe variant swaps them for - and _ and drops the = padding.
Tick the box if the result is going into a query string or a filename.
Common questions
How do I decode a Base64 string?
Set the direction to decode and paste the string. Standard and URL-safe Base64 both use the same idea, but URL-safe replaces + and / with - and _.
Is Base64 secure?
No, and this is the most important thing to know about it. It is encoding, not encryption. Anyone can decode it in seconds. Never use it to protect a password, key or token.
Why does my encoded text get longer?
Base64 represents every 3 bytes as 4 characters, so output is about 33% larger. That is inherent to the format — it exists to make binary safe as text, not to compress it.
Does it handle emoji and Indian languages?
Yes. The text is converted to UTF-8 before encoding, which is what many other tools skip. Round-tripping ₹, café or an emoji returns exactly what you started with.
Should I embed images as data URIs?
Only tiny ones. Under about 5KB the saved request is worth it. Larger than that and you lose more in page weight and lost caching than you gain.
Are my files uploaded?
No. The file is read by your browser and never sent anywhere.
Need more customers as well?
This tool is free and always will be. If you also want ads, search and follow-up that bring in customers, I offer a free 45-minute consultation for businesses in the USA, UK, UAE, Australia and India.
Book a free consultationBuilt and maintained by Premkumar Ragav, an independent performance marketing specialist. Updated November 2026.