# iconv-lite

> Convert character encodings in pure javascript.

Latest version **0.7.3** (published 2026-07-03) · MIT license · 0 weekly downloads

## Install

```sh
npm install iconv-lite
pnpm add iconv-lite
yarn add iconv-lite
bun add iconv-lite
```

## Health

**Score 65/100 (B)** — status: active.

Positive: has types; no vulnerabilities; recently updated; high maintenance score; high quality score.

Warnings: low downloads; no esm support; pre 1.0.

## Facts

| | |
|---|---|
| Version | 0.7.3 |
| Published | 2026-07-03 |
| First published | 2011-11-09 |
| Weekly downloads | 0 |
| License | MIT |
| TypeScript types | bundled |
| Module format | CommonJS |
| Node | >=0.10.0 |
| Dependencies | 1 |
| Unpacked size | 336.1 KB |
| Known vulnerabilities | 0 |
| Install scripts | no |
| GitHub stars | 3178 |
| Author | Alexander Shtuchkin |
| Maintainers | wesleytodd, bsebas, ashtuchkin |
| Keywords | iconv, convert, charset, icu |

## Links

- npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/iconv-lite
- Repository: https://github.com/pillarjs/iconv-lite
- Issues: https://github.com/pillarjs/iconv-lite/issues
- Funding: https://opencollective.com/express
- npm.io page: https://npm.io/package/iconv-lite

## Dependencies (1)

- [safer-buffer](https://npm.io/package/safer-buffer.md) >= 2.1.2 < 3.0.0

## Alternatives

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- [@react-native-vector-icons/common](https://npm.io/package/@react-native-vector-icons/common.md) — 150.4K weekly downloads
- [@procore/core-icons](https://npm.io/package/@procore/core-icons.md) — 4.6K weekly downloads
- [@react-md/material-icons](https://npm.io/package/@react-md/material-icons.md) — 1.6K weekly downloads

## Recent versions

- 0.7.3 (latest) — 2026-07-03
- 1.0.0-alpha.2 (next) — 2026-07-03
- 0.4.0-pre3 (bleeding) — 2014-04-28
- 1.0.0-alpha.1 — 2026-01-08
- 0.7.2 — 2026-01-08
- 0.7.1 — 2025-12-11
- 0.7.0 — 2025-08-20
- 0.6.3 — 2021-05-24
- 0.6.2 — 2020-07-08
- 0.6.1 — 2020-06-28
- 0.6.0 — 2020-06-08
- 0.5.2 — 2020-06-08
- 0.5.1 — 2020-01-18
- 0.5.0 — 2019-06-26
- 0.4.24 — 2018-08-22
- … 42 more at https://npm.io/package/iconv-lite/versions

## README

## iconv-lite: Pure JS character encoding conversion

[![NPM Version][npm-version-image]][npm-url]
[![NPM Downloads][npm-downloads-image]][npm-downloads-url]
[![License][license-image]][license-url]
[![NPM Install Size][npm-install-size-image]][npm-install-size-url]

* No need for native code compilation. Quick to install, works on Windows, Web, and in sandboxed environments.
* Used in popular projects like [Express.js (body_parser)](https://github.com/expressjs/body-parser), 
  [Grunt](http://gruntjs.com/), [Nodemailer](http://www.nodemailer.com/), [Yeoman](http://yeoman.io/) and others.
* Faster than [node-iconv](https://github.com/bnoordhuis/node-iconv) (see below for performance comparison).
* Intuitive encode/decode API, including Streaming support.
* In-browser usage via [browserify](https://github.com/substack/node-browserify) or [webpack](https://webpack.js.org/) (~180kb gzip compressed with Buffer shim included).
* Typescript [type definition file](https://github.com/ashtuchkin/iconv-lite/blob/master/lib/index.d.ts) included.
* React Native is supported (need to install `stream` module to enable Streaming API).

## Usage

### Basic API

```javascript
var iconv = require('iconv-lite');

// Convert from an encoded buffer to a js string.
str = iconv.decode(Buffer.from([0x68, 0x65, 0x6c, 0x6c, 0x6f]), 'win1251');

// Convert from a js string to an encoded buffer.
buf = iconv.encode("Sample input string", 'win1251');

// Check if encoding is supported
iconv.encodingExists("us-ascii")
```

### Streaming API

```javascript
// Decode stream (from binary data stream to js strings)
http.createServer(function(req, res) {
    var converterStream = iconv.decodeStream('win1251');
    req.pipe(converterStream);

    converterStream.on('data', function(str) {
        console.log(str); // Do something with decoded strings, chunk-by-chunk.
    });
});

// Convert encoding streaming example
fs.createReadStream('file-in-win1251.txt')
    .pipe(iconv.decodeStream('win1251'))
    .pipe(iconv.encodeStream('ucs2'))
    .pipe(fs.createWriteStream('file-in-ucs2.txt'));

// Sugar: all encode/decode streams have .collect(cb) method to accumulate data.
http.createServer(function(req, res) {
    req.pipe(iconv.decodeStream('win1251')).collect(function(err, body) {
        assert(typeof body == 'string');
        console.log(body); // full request body string
    });
});
```

## Supported encodings

 *  All node.js native encodings: utf8, ucs2 / utf16-le, ascii, binary, base64, hex.
 *  Additional unicode encodings: utf16, utf16-be, utf-7, utf-7-imap, utf32, utf32-le, and utf32-be.
 *  All widespread singlebyte encodings: Windows 125x family, ISO-8859 family, 
    IBM/DOS codepages, Macintosh family, KOI8 family, all others supported by iconv library. 
    Aliases like 'latin1', 'us-ascii' also supported.
 *  All widespread multibyte encodings: CP932, CP936, CP949, CP950, GB2312, GBK, GB18030, Big5, Shift_JIS, EUC-JP.

See [all supported encodings on wiki](https://github.com/ashtuchkin/iconv-lite/wiki/Supported-Encodings).

Most singlebyte encodings are generated automatically from [node-iconv](https://github.com/bnoordhuis/node-iconv). Thank you Ben Noordhuis and libiconv authors!

Multibyte encodings are generated from [Unicode.org mappings](http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/) and [WHATWG Encoding Standard mappings](http://encoding.spec.whatwg.org/). Thank you, respective authors!

## Encoding/decoding speed

Comparison with node-iconv module (1000x256kb, on MacBook Pro, Core i5/2.6 GHz, Node v0.12.0). 
Note: your results may vary, so please always check on your hardware.

    operation             iconv@2.1.4   iconv-lite@0.4.7
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    encode('win1251')     ~96 Mb/s      ~320 Mb/s
    decode('win1251')     ~95 Mb/s      ~246 Mb/s

## BOM handling

 * Decoding: BOM is stripped by default, unless overridden by passing `stripBOM: false` in options
   (f.ex. `iconv.decode(buf, enc, {stripBOM: false})`).
   A callback might also be given as a `stripBOM` parameter - it'll be called if BOM character was actually found.
 * If you want to detect UTF-8 BOM when decoding other encodings, use [node-autodetect-decoder-stream](https://github.com/danielgindi/node-autodetect-decoder-stream) module.
 * Encoding: No BOM added, unless overridden by `addBOM: true` option.

## UTF-16 Encodings

This library supports UTF-16LE, UTF-16BE and UTF-16 encodings. First two are straightforward, but UTF-16 is trying to be
smart about endianness in the following ways:
 * Decoding: uses BOM and 'spaces heuristic' to determine input endianness. Default is UTF-16LE, but can be 
   overridden with `defaultEncoding: 'utf-16be'` option. Strips BOM unless `stripBOM: false`.
 * Encoding: uses UTF-16LE and writes BOM by default. Use `addBOM: false` to override.

## UTF-32 Encodings

This library supports UTF-32LE, UTF-32BE and UTF-32 encodings. Like the UTF-16 encoding above, UTF-32 defaults to UTF-32LE, but uses BOM and 'spaces heuristics' to determine input endianness. 
 * The default of UTF-32LE can be overridden with the `defaultEncoding: 'utf-32be'` option. Strips BOM unless `stripBOM: false`.
 * Encoding: uses UTF-32LE and writes BOM by default. Use `addBOM: false` to override. (`defaultEncoding: 'utf-32be'` can also be used here to change encoding.)

## Other notes

When decoding, be sure to supply a Buffer to decode() method, otherwise [bad things usually happen](https://github.com/ashtuchkin/iconv-lite/wiki/Use-Buffers-when-decoding).  
Untranslatable characters are set to � or ?. No transliteration is currently supported.  
Node versions 0.10.31 and 0.11.13 are buggy, don't use them (see [#65](https://github.com/ashtuchkin/iconv-lite/issues/65), [#77](https://github.com/ashtuchkin/iconv-lite/issues/77)).  

## Testing

```sh
git clone git@github.com:ashtuchkin/iconv-lite.git
cd iconv-lite
npm install
npm test
    
# To view performance:
npm run test:performance

# To view test coverage: 
npm run test:cov
open coverage/index.html
```

[npm-downloads-image]: https://badgen.net/npm/dm/iconv-lite
[npm-downloads-url]: https://npmcharts.com/compare/iconv-lite?minimal=true
[npm-url]: https://npmjs.org/package/iconv-lite
[npm-version-image]: https://badgen.net/npm/v/iconv-lite
[npm-install-size-image]: https://badgen.net/packagephobia/install/iconv-lite
[npm-install-size-url]: https://packagephobia.com/result?p=iconv-lite
[license-image]: https://img.shields.io/npm/l/iconv-lite.svg
[license-url]: https://github.com/ashtuchkin/iconv-lite/blob/HEAD/LICENSE

---
_Source: https://npm.io/package/iconv-lite · Machine-readable twin of the npm.io package page. Health data is recomputed on every publish._