---
title: Plaintext
slug: Glossary/Plaintext
tags:
  - Cryptography
  - Glossary
  - Security
---
Plaintext refers to information that is being used as an input to an {{Glossary("encryption")}} {{Glossary("algorithm")}}, or to {{Glossary("ciphertext")}} that has been decrypted.

It is frequently used interchangeably with the term _cleartext_, which more loosely refers to any information, such as a text document, image, etc., that has not been encrypted and can be read by a human or computer without additional processing.
