Kilobytes to Gigabits (kB to Gb)

1 kilobyte equals 0.000008 gigabits exactly.

How to convert kilobytes to gigabits

To convert kilobytes to gigabits, multiply the number of kilobytes by 0.000008. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply gigabits by 125,000.

gigabits = kilobytes × 0.000008

Example: 10 kilobytes = 0.00008 gigabits.

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

Kilobyte (kB)

ComputingCurrent unit

1,000 bytes in the SI (decimal) definition. Older software and Windows sometimes use KB to mean 1,024 bytes; see kibibyte.

Few units have had two meanings for so long. By the mid-1960s most computers used binary addressing, so memory sizes came in powers of two and engineers borrowed kilo to mean 1,024. IBM documentation for the System/360 in 1964 used an uppercase K for 1,024. Hard disk makers took a different path from the start. The IEC later settled the question: kilobyte, symbol kB, means 1,000 bytes, and 1,024 bytes is a kibibyte.

Floppy disks show the muddle. The Shugart SA-400 of 1976 held 109,375 bytes unformatted and was advertised as 110 Kbyte, the decimal way, while a 1978 Tandon double-density disk held 368,640 bytes, or 360 times 1,024, and was sold as 360 KB. Windows still divides by 1,024, so a 65,536-byte file appears as 64 KB there, while Mac OS X Snow Leopard and later would call it 66 kB. A kilobyte is also tiny: Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado is 12,843 bytes.

1 kilobyte = 1,000 bytes (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Kilobyte; Wikipedia: Binary prefix; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples

Gigabit (Gb)

ComputingCurrent unit

1,000,000,000 bits (125 MB).

Gigabit is one billion bits, or 125 million bytes. In the IEC notation it is written Gbit, while IEEE 1541-2002 recommends Gb, which may be confused with GB for gigabyte. The binary counterpart, the gibibit, is 2 to the thirtieth bits. Network links and fiber are usually rated in gigabits per second, because data transfer rates are measured in decimal SI multiples.

Memory is where gigabits and binary habits collide. Chip capacity is often given in binary multiples using the ambiguous G prefix rather than the IEC Gi, so a DRAM chip advertised as 1 GB has 2 to the thirtieth bytes. The Wikipedia article on the bit says this was still causing difficulty for software designers as of 2022. When you see a gigabit rate, divide by eight for gigabytes per second.

1 gigabit = 125,000,000 bytes (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Gigabit; Wikipedia: Bit

Related conversions

See all digital storage units.