Softonic

BBCode to HTML Converter

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BBCode was the lightweight markup of the forum era — [b]bold[/b], [url], [quote], [code]. Every phpBB, vBulletin, XenForo and SMF board used it, and millions of posts across those platforms still exist. This converter parses BBCode and outputs clean, valid HTML you can paste into a modern CMS, a static site or a Markdown-to-HTML pipeline that does not understand forum tags.

How to convert BBCode

  1. 1

    Paste your BBCode

    Whole posts or snippets. Nested tags are handled.

  2. 2

    The parser tokenises opening and closing tags

    Matching `[tag]...[/tag]` pairs produce the corresponding HTML element.

  3. 3

    Tag attributes are mapped

    Things like `[color=red]`, `[size=18]` or `[url=https://...]` become inline styles or `href` attributes.

  4. 4

    Copy the HTML

    Ready for a blog post, a documentation page or a forum migration.

Supported tags

BBCode HTML output
[b]text[/b] <strong>text</strong>
[i]text[/i] <em>text</em>
[u]text[/u] <u>text</u> or <ins>
[s]text[/s] <del>text</del>
[url]link[/url] <a href="link">link</a>
[url=link]text[/url] <a href="link">text</a>
[img]link[/img] <img src="link">
[quote]q[/quote] <blockquote>q</blockquote>
[code]c[/code] <pre><code>c</code></pre>
[list][*]a[*]b[/list] <ul><li>a</li><li>b</li></ul>
[list=1][*]a[/list] <ol><li>a</li></ol>
[color=red]t[/color] <span style="color:red">t</span>
[size=18]t[/size] <span style="font-size:18px">t</span>
[table]...[/table] <table>...</table>

Security notes

BBCode is safe by design; HTML is not. Converting user-submitted BBCode to HTML is the classic moment a forum introduced XSS in 2005. If you are publishing converted output:

  • Escape any raw text inside BBCode tags.
  • Whitelist the tags your converter emits — do not forward unknown tags as raw HTML.
  • Validate URLs in [url] and [img] to block javascript: and data: schemes.

This tool strips or neutralises any script-like URLs during conversion.

Migrating a whole forum

For moving thousands of posts, run the converter as a pipeline: export posts as BBCode → run through this converter → import the HTML. Spot-check a few dozen posts with unusual nesting or custom emoji codes that may not be in the standard tag set.

What BBCode does not map cleanly

  • Custom forum smilies (:D and :)) — leave as is and render with CSS, or pre-process them separately.
  • Plugin-specific tags (like [spoiler], [youtube]) — listed in the custom tags panel; otherwise emitted as literal text.
  • Merged or unclosed tags — parser tries to self-close but extremely malformed input may lose formatting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes: Steam community posts, vBulletin and XenForo boards, some wikis and many legacy phpBB installs. It also survives as the underlying markup in a handful of game-server control panels.

Not this tool — use the HTML to BBCode converter. Going back is lossier because HTML is much more expressive than BBCode.

Unknown tags pass through as literal text by default. A “strict” mode strips them entirely if you want a guaranteed-clean output.

Yes. [quote], [list] and [code] can nest arbitrarily deep. The parser tracks tag stacks and closes them correctly.

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