Base64 to Image

You are staring at an API response, a CSS file, or a network tab in devtools and there is a long string of characters sitting there, something that starts with data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgo... or maybe just the raw encoded block with no prefix at all. You want to know what image that actually is without cracking open a terminal or writing a throwaway script. Paste it here, pick the input type, and you will have the image in a few seconds.

Data URLs vs Raw Base64: What's the Difference

A data URL bundles the MIME type right into the string: data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgo.... The browser knows from that prefix what kind of file it is decoding. A raw base64 string skips all of that and is just the encoded data itself: iVBORw0KGgo.... Both are valid inputs here; the selector on the tool tells it which one you are pasting. If you copied the string from an <img src=""> attribute in HTML or from a CSS background-image: url(...) rule, it is almost certainly a data URL. If it came from a JSON field like "image": "iVBORw...", it is raw base64 with no prefix attached.

When You Actually Need a Base64 Decoder

Debugging an API that returns images as base64 fields is the most common reason; paste the value here instead of writing a quick Python script just to see what it is. Inspecting CSS source where small icons are embedded inline is another: you want to see what that 4KB string actually looks like before you decide whether to keep it or replace it with an external file. Checking an HTML email template where the inline image is not rendering is a third; decoding the string yourself is the fastest way to confirm whether the data is valid or the base64 got truncated somewhere during copy-paste. And if you are generating base64 output with your own encoding script, pasting the result here gives you a quick visual sanity check that it encoded correctly.

What You Get Back and What Can Go Wrong

Decoding is lossless, the output image is bit-for-bit identical to whatever was originally encoded, with no recompression or processing applied. The output format (PNG, JPG, WEBP, GIF) comes from the MIME type declared in the data URL prefix, or from the content of the raw string itself. If the result looks corrupted, blank, or refuses to render, the problem is almost always in the source string: a truncated base64 block is the most common culprit, usually caused by a copy that cut off before the end. The second most common mistake is a mismatch between the selector and what you actually pasted. If you are pasting a full data URL but the tool is set to raw base64 (or vice versa), the decode will fail or produce garbage. Match the selector to what you have and the output should be exact.