%C3%A9 is the URL-encoded e with acute accent (é).
In a URL, %C3%A9 stands for the e with acute accent (é) (2 UTF-8 bytes). Here is when to encode it, what it does in each part of a URL, and what every major language outputs.
Quick facts
| Character | é |
|---|---|
| Name | Latin small letter e with acute (é) |
| Unicode | U+00E9 |
| UTF-8 bytes | C3 A9 (2 bytes) |
| Percent-encoded | %C3%A9 |
| Lowercase form | %c3%a9 — identical meaning |
| Double-encoded | %25C3%25A9 |
| HTML form encoding | %C3%A9 |
| RFC 3986 class | Not allowed in URLs |
| HTML entity | é |
What it means in a URL
Non-ASCII letters are encoded as their UTF-8 bytes: é is two bytes, %C3%A9. Older systems using ISO-8859-1 or Windows-1252 produce %E9 instead, which is the usual cause of garbled accents.
RFC 3986 class: Not allowed in URLs. It is outside the characters RFC 3986 permits, so it must always be percent-encoded.
When to encode it
| Where it appears | What to do |
|---|---|
| Path segment | Encode |
| Query value | Encode |
| Fragment | Encode |
| Form body | Encode |
The mistake to watch for
Seeing café: UTF-8 bytes decoded as Windows-1252. Seeing caf%E9 fail to decode: Latin-1 bytes decoded as UTF-8. Match the charset.
What each language produces
Every function in this table encodes it. Output for the single character, UTF-8 input, tested against the real runtimes (see the encoding comparator for your own strings).
| Function | Output | |
|---|---|---|
| JavaScript encodeURIComponent(s) | %C3%A9 | encoded |
| JavaScript encodeURI(s) | %C3%A9 | encoded |
| JavaScript URLSearchParams | %C3%A9 | encoded |
| Python urllib.parse.quote(s) | %C3%A9 | encoded |
| Python quote(s, safe="") | %C3%A9 | encoded |
| Python urllib.parse.quote_plus(s) | %C3%A9 | encoded |
| PHP rawurlencode($s) | %C3%A9 | encoded |
| PHP urlencode($s) | %C3%A9 | encoded |
| Java URLEncoder.encode(s, UTF_8) | %C3%A9 | encoded |
| Go url.QueryEscape(s) | %C3%A9 | encoded |
| Go url.PathEscape(s) | %C3%A9 | encoded |
| Ruby URI.encode_www_form_component(s) | %C3%A9 | encoded |
| Ruby ERB::Util.url_encode(s) | %C3%A9 | encoded |
| C# / .NET Uri.EscapeDataString(s) | %C3%A9 | encoded |
Decoding it
decodeURIComponent('%C3%A9') returns the e with acute accent (é). Python: urllib.parse.unquote('%C3%A9'); PHP: rawurldecode('%C3%A9'). Paste any string into the URL decoder to decode it in your browser.
← %E2%80%99 Right single quotation mark (’) · Full URL encoding table · %20 Space →
Common questions.
%C3%A9 is the percent-encoded form of the e with acute accent (é) — UTF-8 bytes C3 A9, each written as % plus two hex digits. Decoding the URL turns it back into the character.
Yes. Hex digits in percent-encoding are case-insensitive, so %c3%a9 and %C3%A9 mean the same thing. RFC 3986 recommends uppercase, and mixing cases can make caches and analytics count one URL as two.
Use your language’s encoder on the value: encodeURIComponent in JavaScript gives %C3%A9, Python’s quote(s, safe="") gives %C3%A9, PHP’s rawurlencode gives %C3%A9.
More from the toolkit.
About this page. Written and maintained by Sri Murugan Systems, the developer of urlencodedecode.com. Character classes follow RFC 3986 §2; language outputs were generated by running each function in its real runtime.