URL encoding (percent-encoding) converts characters that aren't safe in a URL — like spaces, &, #, and non-ASCII characters — into a %XX hex-escaped format, so the string can be safely embedded in a URL query parameter or path segment.
This tool escapes or unescapes special characters within a single string. The URL Parser tool instead takes a complete, already-valid URL and breaks it into its components (protocol, host, path, query params).
This tool uses encodeURIComponent, which escapes every reserved character — the correct choice for encoding a single query parameter value or path segment. encodeURI leaves URL-structural characters like / and & untouched, since it's meant for encoding a whole URL at once.