Mebibytes to Megabits (MiB to Mb)

1 mebibyte equals 8.388608 megabits exactly.

How to convert mebibytes to megabits

To convert mebibytes to megabits, multiply the number of mebibytes by 8.388608. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply megabits by 0.1192092896 (rounded).

megabits = mebibytes × 8.388608

Example: 10 mebibytes = 83.88608 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

Mebibyte (MiB)

ComputingCurrent unit

Exactly 1,048,576 bytes (2²⁰). The binary megabyte, about 4.9% larger than a decimal megabyte.

Mebi, from mega with the binary i added, belongs to the same 1998 IEC family as kibi and gibi, which the IEC published as Amendment 2 to IEC 60027-2 in January 1999. NIST gives the factor as 2 to the twentieth, or 1,048,576 bytes. It was meant to settle a real argument: once storage makers and telecom engineers used decimal values and programmers used binary ones, megabyte came to mean different amounts.

A mebibyte is about 4.9 percent larger than a megabyte, and the standard is now IEC 80000-13. The classic example is the 1.44 MB floppy, whose true capacity is 1,440 KiB, which is 1.47 MB or 1.41 MiB. Like other IEC symbols, MiB is rarely used outside tools such as KDE and Qt-based applications, while Windows and RAM labels use MB for the binary quantity.

1 mebibyte = 1,048,576 bytes (exactly).

Sources: NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples; Wikipedia: Mebibyte

Megabit (Mb)

ComputingCurrent unit

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

See all digital storage units.