What is a URL Parser?
A URL is a small structured document. Read left to right it has a scheme, an authority made of optional credentials plus host and port, a path, a query string and a fragment — and each part has rules about what may appear in it. A URL parser splits those parts out so you can see which one you actually have.
The query string is where most debugging happens. It begins at the first question mark and holds key-value pairs joined by ampersands, with keys and values percent-encoded so that characters reserved by the URL grammar — ampersands, equals signs, spaces, slashes — can appear inside a value. The tool shows each parameter both as it is written in the URL and after percent-decoding, because those two forms differ whenever a value contains a space, an accent or a non-Latin script.
Parsing follows the WHATWG URL standard, the same algorithm the browser and Node use, so the answer matches what a fetch call would see. That includes resolution: a fragment is never sent to the server, and a URL with no port reports the scheme's default rather than an empty string.
How to parse a URL
- Paste the full URL into the box, including the https:// scheme. A bare domain without a scheme is not an absolute URL and will be reported as invalid.
- Read the components table. It lists the protocol, host, port, path, query string, fragment, origin and any credentials, each with a one-line explanation.
- Check the query parameters table, which gives every key, its raw encoded value and the decoded value. Duplicate keys are all listed rather than collapsed, as they are in a real query string.
- Use the decoded query string box at the bottom to copy the whole string in its readable form. Nothing is requested from the address you paste — it is only read as text.
URL Parser limits and rules
| Item | Limit |
|---|---|
| Standard | WHATWG URL — the same parser the browser and Node.js use |
| Requires | An absolute URL with a scheme, such as https://example.com or mailto:user@example.com |
| Protocols | Any the platform recognizes: http, https, ftp, ws, wss, file, mailto and more |
| Credentials | user:password@ in the authority is shown, with the password masked |
| Port | Reported as empty when the URL uses the scheme's default port |
| Query decoding | Percent-decoding applied, and + read as a space — the HTML form convention |
| Duplicate parameters | All kept and listed in order, not collapsed to the last value |
| Fragment | Shown but never sent to the server; it is resolved by the browser |
| Safety | The URL is parsed as text only — no DNS lookup, no HTTP request, no redirect following |
| Not covered | Relative URL resolution, punycode display, and validation of whether the address actually resolves |
When to use it
- Debugging a tracking link where a parameter contains a full destination URL — the nested ampersands and percent-encoding make it impossible to read without decoding it.
- Confirming that a redirect preserved the query string, or that a campaign parameter survived a sign-in flow.
- Checking which part of a URL a fragment refers to, and remembering that it is client-side only and never reaches the server.
- Reading a URL from a log or a support ticket without opening it — the parse is text-only, so no request is made and nothing can be triggered.
- Decoding a percent-encoded value to recover the original text, including non-Latin characters that appear as percent-triplets in the raw URL.
Is it private?
Everything runs inside your browser. Your text and files are never uploaded, never stored and never seen by anyone else — including me. You can use the tool with the network tab open and watch no request leave the page. Closing the tab erases the input.
Frequently asked questions
No. The URL is only parsed as a string. No DNS lookup, HTTP request or redirect is performed, so a link from an email or a log can be inspected safely — though the browser's own link preview may still do something, so paste carefully.
It is missing a scheme. www.example.com is a relative reference, so the parser has no base to resolve it against. Add https:// — or paste the full URL including the scheme as the browser would send it.
It does not, in that case. https://example.com:443/ has a default port, and default ports are normalised away, exactly as the browser does when comparing origins. A non-standard port such as :8443 is shown.
The raw value is what is literally in the URL, with reserved characters written as percent-triplets. The decoded value is what the server would receive after percent-decoding. They differ whenever a value contains a space, an ampersand, an equals sign or a non-ASCII character.
No. Everything from the # onwards is resolved by the browser and stripped before the request goes out. That is why single-page apps can use route fragments without server configuration, and why a server can never see them.
Related tools
Written and maintained by Md. Nur Hossain Repon.