Orpheus

Base64 Encoder and Decoder

Encode or decode Base64, including the URL-safe variant.

Options
Direction
URL-safe alphabet

Uses - and _ instead of + and /, and drops the = padding.

Result

Everything is processed in this tab. Nothing you paste is sent anywhere.

Every tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded to a server.

Base64 represents binary data using 64 printable characters so it can travel through systems that expect text. Encoding makes data about 33 percent larger. It is an encoding, not encryption — anyone can decode it instantly.

How to use Base64 Encoder & Decoder

  1. Paste your text or Base64. Encoding and decoding both happen as you type.
  2. Choose the direction. Encode turns text into Base64; decode turns it back.
  3. Switch alphabet if needed. URL-safe swaps + and / for - and _ so the result survives a query string.

About Base64 encoding

Base64 exists because a great many systems were built to carry text and will corrupt anything else. Email bodies, JSON string values, XML attributes, HTTP headers and URLs all have characters with structural meaning, and arbitrary binary will sooner or later contain a byte that breaks them. Base64 sidesteps this by using only letters, digits and two symbols, at a cost of roughly a third more size. The most consequential misunderstanding about it is security. Base64 is not encryption, obfuscation or hashing; it is a public, reversible mapping with no secret involved. Credentials encoded into a Base64 string are exactly as exposed as they were in plain text, which is why HTTP Basic authentication — which is Base64 and nothing else — is considered safe only over HTTPS. The second common trap is Unicode. The browser primitive underneath most implementations works on bytes and rejects any character above U+00FF, so naive tools either throw or silently corrupt anything non-English. Encoding text to UTF-8 bytes first is the correct handling, and it is why an emoji or an accented name pasted here comes back exactly as it went in.

Frequently asked questions

Is Base64 a form of encryption?
No, and treating it as one is a genuine security mistake. It is a reversible encoding with no key. Anyone who sees the string can decode it in a second. It hides nothing — it only makes binary data safe to put in a text field.
Why does my decoded text have strange characters?
Usually because the original was encoded byte-by-byte without UTF-8 handling, which mangles anything outside basic Latin. This tool encodes to UTF-8 first, so accents, non-Latin scripts and emoji survive a round trip intact.
What is URL-safe Base64?
A variant that replaces + with - and / with _, because the standard characters have meaning inside a URL and get percent-encoded. It also usually drops the trailing = padding. JWTs use it, which is why a token pasted here needs the toggle on.
Why did my data get bigger?
Base64 represents three bytes using four characters, so the result is about 33 percent larger, plus padding. That overhead is the price of passing binary through a text-only channel such as an email body or a JSON string.

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