UTF-8 Encoder Decoder
Encode text into UTF-8 bytes or decode UTF-8 hexadecimal, decimal or binary byte sequences back into readable Unicode text. Inspect code points, byte lengths, hexadecimal values, decimal bytes, binary bytes and UTF-8 validation details.
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UTF-8 Encoder Decoder
The UTF-8 Encoder Decoder converts Unicode text into UTF-8 bytes and can also perform the reverse operation by decoding UTF-8 byte sequences back into readable text. It is designed for developers, students, engineers and anyone working with character encoding, byte streams or multilingual text.
The encoder displays each character’s Unicode code point together with the actual bytes produced by UTF-8. The decoder accepts hexadecimal, decimal or binary byte input and validates whether the sequence forms legal UTF-8.
What Is UTF-8?
UTF-8 is a variable-length encoding for Unicode. It represents every Unicode code point using between one and four bytes while preserving the original ASCII byte values for characters from U+0000 through U+007F.
| Unicode Range | UTF-8 Length | General Pattern |
|---|---|---|
| U+0000–U+007F | 1 byte | 0xxxxxxx |
| U+0080–U+07FF | 2 bytes | 110xxxxx 10xxxxxx |
| U+0800–U+FFFF | 3 bytes | 1110xxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx |
| U+10000–U+10FFFF | 4 bytes | 11110xxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx |
How to Encode Text as UTF-8
Select Encode Text, enter the text you want to process and click Encode UTF-8. The tool converts every Unicode character into its UTF-8 byte sequence and shows the bytes in hexadecimal, decimal and binary forms.
Text:
Hello
UTF-8 Hex:
48 65 6C 6C 6F
Decimal:
72 101 108 108 111
Binary:
01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111How to Decode UTF-8 Bytes
Select Decode Bytes and choose whether your input is hexadecimal, decimal or binary. Enter the complete byte sequence and click Decode UTF-8. Strict mode rejects malformed UTF-8; replacement mode substitutes invalid portions with the Unicode replacement character.
Hex:
E2 82 AC
Binary:
11100010 10000010 10101100
Decoded Unicode:
€
Code Point:
U+20ACASCII and UTF-8 Compatibility
The first 128 Unicode code points use exactly the same byte values in UTF-8 as they do in ASCII. This means ordinary English letters, digits and common punctuation require only one byte each.
Character:
A
Unicode:
U+0041
UTF-8 Hex:
41
Decimal:
65
Binary:
01000001UTF-8 Two-Byte Characters
Characters from U+0080 through U+07FF normally require two UTF-8 bytes. These include many Latin characters with accents as well as characters from several other writing systems.
Character:
é
Unicode:
U+00E9
UTF-8:
C3 A9
Binary:
11000011 10101001UTF-8 Three-Byte Characters
Many commonly used Unicode characters require three UTF-8 bytes, including the Euro sign and many characters from Asian writing systems.
Character:
€
Unicode:
U+20AC
UTF-8:
E2 82 AC
Decimal:
226 130 172UTF-8 Four-Byte Characters and Emoji
Unicode characters above U+FFFF require four UTF-8 bytes. Many emoji and historic writing-system characters fall into this range.
Character:
🌍
Unicode:
U+1F30D
UTF-8 Hex:
F0 9F 8C 8D
Decimal:
240 159 140 141
Binary:
11110000 10011111 10001100 10001101UTF-8 Hexadecimal, Decimal and Binary
The same UTF-8 byte can be written using different number systems. Hexadecimal is often preferred in debugging because one byte fits neatly into two hex digits, while binary exposes every individual bit.
| Hex | Decimal | Binary |
|---|---|---|
| 41 | 65 | 01000001 |
| C3 | 195 | 11000011 |
| A9 | 169 | 10101001 |
| F0 | 240 | 11110000 |
UTF-8 Validation
Not every arbitrary sequence of bytes represents valid UTF-8. Multi-byte sequences must use the proper leading-byte and continuation-byte patterns, and the resulting code point must fall within the valid Unicode range.
Strict validation is useful when checking protocol payloads, files and API responses because malformed sequences are reported instead of silently producing replacement characters.
Unicode Code Points vs UTF-8 Bytes
A Unicode code point identifies an abstract character, while UTF-8 defines the actual bytes used to encode that code point. They are related but are not the same thing.
Character:
€
Unicode code point:
U+20AC
UTF-8 encoded bytes:
E2 82 ACWhere UTF-8 Encoding Is Used
UTF-8 is extensively used for websites, HTML documents, JSON, XML, APIs, databases, programming-language source files, configuration files, messaging systems, network protocols and operating-system text.
Because it supports all Unicode characters while remaining compatible with ASCII, UTF-8 is a practical default encoding for modern software and web content.