OneTaskBy Tim King · Updated
Base32 Encoder
Encode and Decode Base58, Ascii85, Z85 and Crockford Base32 in Your Browser
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How the Base32, Base58 and Base85 Encoder works
This Base32 encoder also handles Base58 and the two Base85 flavours, Ascii85 and Z85. Choose an encoding and a direction, then type or paste. Decoded output that is not valid text is shown as hex bytes so nothing is silently mangled.
When to use the Base32 encoder
Base32 uses only capital letters and the digits 2 to 7, so it survives case-insensitive systems and is easy to read aloud. That is why TOTP secrets and many recovery keys use it. Base32hex keeps sort order, and Crockford's variant drops I, L, O and U to avoid misreading, and accepts those letters as 1 and 0 when decoding.
Base58
Base58 is Bitcoin's encoding for addresses and keys. It removes 0, O, I and l and the two symbols
Base64 uses, so a value can be double-clicked and copied as a single word. It is slower than the
others because it treats the whole input as one big number, and each leading zero byte becomes a
leading 1.
Base85
Ascii85, from Adobe PostScript and PDF, packs four bytes into five characters — about 25% overhead
against Base64's 33%. It writes an all-zero group as z and wraps output in <~ ~>. Z85, from ZeroMQ,
uses a different alphabet that is safe in source code and requires input in whole four-byte groups.
FAQ
Which encoding makes the shortest output?
Base85 is the most compact at five characters for every four bytes. Base58 is close to Base64 at roughly 1.37 characters per byte. Base32 is the longest, 1.6 characters per byte, in exchange for being case-insensitive and easy to type.
Why does Z85 refuse my text?
Z85 is defined only for data whose length is a multiple of four bytes. Pad the input — many protocols append zero bytes and record the real length separately — or use Ascii85, which handles any length by trimming the last group.
Does the page handle non-English text?
Yes. Text is converted to UTF-8 bytes before encoding and decoded back from UTF-8. If the decoded bytes are not valid UTF-8 — a key or an image, for example — the page shows them as hex instead of producing garbled characters.
See also: all Security & Identifiers tools, Dev Utilities, Formatters & Validators, Data & Encoding, SEO, Accessibility, AI.
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