Convert Bits to Kilobytes

About converting Bits to Kilobytes

Bits (bit) and Kilobytes (KB) are both units of digital storage, so converting between them is a single multiplication: multiply your Bits figure by 0.000125. Ten Bits comes to 0.00125 Kilobytes, and a hundred works out at 0.0125 Kilobytes.

Rule of thumb: going from Bits to Kilobytes divides, so the figure always shrinks — it takes about 8,000 Bits to make a single Kilobyte. If your answer came out bigger, you have the conversion the wrong way round.

What is a Bit?

A bit is a single binary digit — one yes or no, the smallest thing a computer can distinguish. The name is a contraction of "binary digit", credited to John Tukey and made famous by Claude Shannon’s 1948 paper founding information theory. The practical thing to know is that bits and bytes live in different places: connection and network speeds are quoted in bits per second, while file sizes are in bytes. That is why a 100 Mbps line downloads at about 12.5 MB/s and people assume they have been cheated. Nobody has — the two figures are counting different things.

What is a Kilobyte?

A kilobyte is 1,000 bytes here, because this site uses the SI meaning of "kilo" — the same thousand as in kilometer, and the same one storage manufacturers print on the box. Computing muddied this by borrowing the prefix for 1,024, the nearest power of two, and Windows still reports storage that way while labelling it "KB". The IEC tried to settle the argument in 1998 by inventing the kibibyte (KiB) for the binary version, so the two could finally be told apart; adoption has been patchy. At this scale the gap is trivial either way.

To put both in perspective: a bit is a single yes-or-no, while a kilobyte is a paragraph or two of plain text.

The converter above updates as you type, and the table lists common values for quick reference. Need the opposite direction? Use the Kilobytes to Bits converter, or browse all Digital Storage converters.