Base64 Encoding / Decoding
Encode text to Base64 or decode Base64 to text.
Encoding Tool
Encode plain text to Base64.
What is Base64?
What is Base64 Encoding?
Base64 is an encoding scheme that converts 8-bit binary data to ASCII characters. It uses only 64 safe characters (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, +, /) to represent all kinds of data in text format.
Key Features
- • ✓ Uses only 64 ASCII characters
- • ✓ Safe in all text environments
- • ✓ Approximately 133% of original size
- • ✓ Length adjustment with padding character (=)
Real-world Use Cases
- • Email attachment transmission
- • Web API data exchange
- • Image data URL generation
- • Including binary data in JSON
- • Configuration files and token storage
Complete Guide to Base64 Encoding
Detailed explanation from Base64 principles to practical applications
🔍 Why Base64 is Needed
Computers store all data in binary form of 0s and 1s. However, many communication protocols like email, HTTP, and JSON are designed to be text-based and cannot directly transmit binary data.
Base64 is a standard method to solve this limitation by converting binary data into safe text characters.
📝 Encoding Example
Original Text:
Hello, World!Base64 Encoding Result:
SGVsbG8sIFdvcmxkIQ==🛠️ Practical Use Cases
Web Development
- • Convert images to Data URLs
- • API authentication token encoding
- • CSS font file embedding
Data Transfer
- • Email attachments
- • Binary data in JSON
- • Images in XML documents
⚠️ Important Notes
- ⚠️Not a security tool: Base64 is encoding, not encryption. Anyone can easily decode it.
- 📈Size increase: Approximately 33% larger than original data.
- 🔤Character limitations: Special characters (+, /) may cause issues in some systems.
💡 Usage Tips
✅ Appropriate Uses
- • Small-sized binary data
- • Text-based protocol transmission
- • Configuration file storage
- • Simple data encoding
❌ Inappropriate Uses
- • Large file storage
- • Security-critical data
- • Data requiring compression
- • Performance-critical real-time processing