Kilobits to Megabytes (kb to MB)
1 kilobit equals 0.000125 megabytes exactly.
How to convert kilobits to megabytes
To convert kilobits to megabytes, multiply the number of kilobits by 0.000125. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply megabytes by 8,000.
megabytes = kilobits × 0.000125
Example: 10 kilobits = 0.00125 megabytes.
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
Kilobit (kb)
1,000 bits (125 bytes). Used for data rates and sizes in telecommunications.
Kilobit means a thousand bits, and in telecommunications data rates are usually measured in decimal SI multiples. The article on the bit gives a handy example: a channel capacity of 8 kbit/s is 1 kB/s, so dividing kilobits by eight gives kilobytes. The binary counterpart, the kibibit, is 1,024 bits, but it is seldom used.
Symbols cause trouble. The IEC standard says to write kbit, while IEEE 1541-2002 recommends a lowercase b, giving kb, and the lowercase b may be confused with capital B for byte. On this site a kilobit is 125 bytes. The history behind it is that of the bit itself: Ralph Hartley proposed a logarithmic information measure in 1928, and Claude Shannon first used the word in 1948, crediting John W. Tukey.
1 kilobit = 125 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Bit; Wikipedia: Kilobit
Megabyte (MB)
1,000,000 bytes (decimal). A typical MP3 song is 3–5 MB; a smartphone photo is 2–5 MB.
Megabyte started out as informal jargon. Base-1,024 usage grew because 1,024 is close to 1,000 and convenient for binary multiples. In 1999 the IEC standardized binary prefixes, assigning megabyte to 10 to the sixth bytes and mebibyte to 2 to the twentieth. By the end of 2009 the IEEE, the EU, ISO and NIST had adopted that standard, though the word still carries different meanings in practice.
The famous 1.44 MB floppy disk is a mixed case: it counts 1,024,000 bytes per megabyte, and it actually holds 1,474,560 bytes. Today most storage media and networking use the decimal definition, while Windows uses the binary one for memory such as RAM. For scale, a PlayStation 2 memory card held 8 MB, the plain text of Moby Dick runs to 1.192 MB, and one megabyte holds about one minute of 128 kbit/s MP3 audio.
1 megabyte = 1,000,000 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Megabyte; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples
Related conversions
- Megabytes to kilobits (reverse)
- Kilobits to bytes
- Kilobits to kilobytes
- Kilobits to gigabytes
- Kilobits to terabytes
- Kilobits to bits
- Kilobits to petabytes
- Kilobits to kibibytes
- Kilobits to mebibytes
- Kilobits to gibibytes
- Kilobits to tebibytes
- Kilobits to megabits
- Kilobits to gigabits
- Bytes to megabytes
- Kilobytes to megabytes
- Gigabytes to megabytes
- Terabytes to megabytes
- Bits to megabytes
- Petabytes to megabytes
- Kibibytes to megabytes
- Mebibytes to megabytes
- Gibibytes to megabytes
- Tebibytes to megabytes
- Megabits to megabytes
- Gigabits to megabytes
See all digital storage units.