Bits to Megabits (bit to Mb)
1 bit equals 0.000001 megabits exactly.
How to convert bits to megabits
To convert bits to megabits, multiply the number of bits by 0.000001. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply megabits by 1,000,000.
megabits = bits × 0.000001
Example: 10 bits = 0.00001 megabits.
Decimal prefixes (kB, MB, GB) are powers of 1,000; binary prefixes (KiB, MiB, GiB) are powers of 1,024. Storage makers use decimal; Windows reports binary but labels it GB.
About these units
Bit (bit)
The smallest unit of digital information: a single 0 or 1. Eight bits make a byte.
Bit is short for binary digit, and the word was coined by John W. Tukey. He shortened the phrase in a Bell Labs memo dated 9 January 1947. Claude Shannon first used it in print in his 1948 paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication and credited Tukey with the word. The idea predates the name: Ralph Hartley proposed a logarithmic measure of information in 1928, and punched cards, invented by Basile Bouchon and Jean-Baptiste Falcon in 1732 and developed by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804, already stored one bit per hole position.
A bit holds one of two values, written 0 or 1, and everything digital is built from them. Eight bits make a byte, so a bit is one eighth of a byte. Symbols for the unit are not settled: the IEC standard uses bit, while IEEE 1541-2002 recommends a lowercase b, with uppercase B reserved for the byte. The difference matters because internet speeds and file sizes are quoted in different units.
1 bit = 0.125 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Bit; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples
Megabit (Mb)
1,000,000 bits (125,000 bytes). Internet speeds are advertised in megabits per second.
Megabit is the unit behind most internet plans: speeds are quoted in megabits per second, while files are sized in megabytes. Since a byte is eight bits, a megabit is one eighth of a megabyte, which is 125,000 bytes in decimal units, and an advertised speed in Mbit/s therefore looks eight times larger than the same rate in megabytes per second. Data transfer rates are usually measured in decimal SI multiples.
Writing it is tricky. The IEC symbol is Mbit and the IEEE recommends Mb, but a capital M with lowercase b is easy to confuse with MB, the megabyte. The binary counterpart, the mebibit, is rarely used. Memory chips are sometimes sized in megabits too, so check which unit a spec sheet is using before comparing numbers.
1 megabit = 125,000 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Bit; Wikipedia: Megabit
Related conversions
- Megabits to bits (reverse)
- Bits to bytes
- Bits to kilobytes
- Bits to megabytes
- Bits to gigabytes
- Bits to terabytes
- Bits to petabytes
- Bits to kibibytes
- Bits to mebibytes
- Bits to gibibytes
- Bits to tebibytes
- Bits to kilobits
- Bits to gigabits
- Bytes to megabits
- Kilobytes to megabits
- Megabytes to megabits
- Gigabytes to megabits
- Terabytes to megabits
- Petabytes to megabits
- Kibibytes to megabits
- Mebibytes to megabits
- Gibibytes to megabits
- Tebibytes to megabits
- Kilobits to megabits
- Gigabits to megabits
See all digital storage units.