B to bit — convert bytes to bits

1B8bit

Exact 1 × 8 = 8

1 byte in other units

Bits8bit
Kilobytes0.001kB
Megabytes0.000001MB
Gigabytes1e-9GB
Terabytes1e-12TB
Petabytes1e-15PB
Kibibytes0.0009765625KiB
Mebibytes9.5367e-7MiB
Gibibytes9.3132e-10GiB
Tebibytes9.0949e-13TiB

B to bit at a glance

BytesBits
1 B8 bit
2 B16 bit
3 B24 bit
5 B40 bit
10 B80 bit
20 B160 bit
25 B200 bit
50 B400 bit
100 B800 bit
250 B2,000 bit
500 B4,000 bit
1,000 B8,000 bit

How to convert bytes to bits

Multiply by 8 — one byte is 8 bits. That factor is exact: it comes from the definition of the units rather than from a measurement, so it will not change and does not need rounding.

Working 1 × 8 = 8

In words: eight bits.

What these units are

The byte and the bit are covered in the digital storage unit guide, along with every other unit on this page.

Questions

How many bits are in a byte?

One byte is 8 bits. This figure is exact — it comes from the definition of the unit, not a measurement.

What is 1 byte in bits?

1 byte is 8 bits. The working is 1 × 8 = 8.

Why does my 1 TB drive show as 931 GB?

Nothing is missing. The manufacturer counts a terabyte as 1,000,000,000,000 bytes, while Windows divides by 1,024 at each step and labels the result GB when it really means GiB. Same bytes, two counting systems.

What is the difference between MB and MiB?

A megabyte is exactly one million bytes. A mebibyte is 1,048,576 bytes — two to the twentieth. The gap is about 4.9% at this scale and widens to roughly 10% by the terabyte.

Is my internet speed in megabytes or megabits?

Megabits. Connection speeds are quoted in Mbps, and there are eight bits to a byte, so a 100 Mbps line downloads at roughly 12.5 MB per second at best. The lowercase b is doing a lot of work in that abbreviation.

Other digital storage conversions

More conversions