Home >Web >HTML reference – elements and attributes >option – list option

option – list option

<option value="value">Option text</option>

One option in select or a suggestion in datalist. The visitor sees the text, the value is sent – and when it is missing, the text of the option.

Default display: display: block
End tag: can be omitted – the option is ended by another option, optgroup or by the end of the list
Content: text
Where it can be used: select, optgroup or datalist
DOM interface: HTMLOptionElement

Attributes

value – the value that is sent (without it, the text of the option with whitespace collapsed).
selected – selected at the start.
disabled – cannot be selected.
label – a shorter text instead of the content.

Examples

A preselected and an unavailable option:

<label for="v-size">Size</label>
<select id="v-size" name="size">
  <option value="500">small (500 g)</option>
  <option value="1000" selected>large (1 kg)</option>
  <option value="2000" disabled>family (2 kg) – sold out</option>
</select>

result

Size

Things to watch out for

Older browsers drop tags inside an option (an icon, bold text) and keep only the text; only browsers with a fully stylable select (appearance: base-select) display them. Do not rely on them yet.
Without value the text is sent, including accented characters and spaces. For values a program processes, a short value is safer.

Browser support

Baseline – widely available: works in all major browsers and has for a long time (since 2015 at the latest). Since version: Chrome 1, Firefox 1, Safari 4. As of October 2026 (MDN browser-compat-data).