KB/s to Bps (kB/s to bit/s)

1 kilobyte per second equals 8,000 bits per second exactly.

1 kilobyte per second = 8,000 bits per second

How to convert kilobytes per second to bits per second

To convert kilobytes per second to bits per second, multiply the number of kilobytes per second by 8,000. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply bits per second by 0.000125.

bits per second = kilobytes per second × 8,000

Example: 10 kilobytes per second = 80,000 bits per second.

Network speeds are quoted in bits per second (lowercase b), while file sizes use bytes (uppercase B). Divide Mbps by 8 for MB/s.

About these units

Kilobyte Per Second (kB/s)

ComputingCurrent unit

1,000 bytes per second (8 kbps). Download managers and browsers show speeds in kB/s.

Few units have had a messier history than the kilobyte. Computers had long used kilo for 1,024 because it is close to 1,000, and early floppy disks show the muddle: the Shugart SA-400 of 1976 held 109,375 bytes and was advertised as 110 Kbyte, while the Tandon double-density drive of 1978 held 368,640 bytes and was advertised as 360 KB. In 1998 the IEC specified that kilobyte should refer only to 1,000 bytes and created the kibibyte for 1,024.

The internationally recommended symbol is kB, and a kilobyte per second is 1,000 bytes per second, or 8 kbit/s. Browsers and download managers often report speeds this way, which is why a connection sold as 8 Mbit/s shows up as about 1,000 kB/s on a file transfer. Some software still divides by 1,024 and labels the result KB, so numbers from different programs may differ by a few percent.

1 kilobyte per second = 8,000 bits per second (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Kilobyte; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples; Wikipedia: Data-rate units

Bit Per Second (bit/s)

ComputingCurrent unit

The basic unit of data rate: one bit transferred each second.

Before there was a bit per second, there had to be a bit. The word is a contraction of binary digit, and John W. Tukey is credited with shortening it in a Bell Labs memo dated 9 January 1947. Claude Shannon then used it in print in his 1948 paper on the mathematical theory of communication, where he credited Tukey. Counting such bits against the clock gave engineers a way to compare telegraph lines, telephone circuits and computer links with one yardstick.

Today the bit per second is the base unit for data rates, written bit/s and often shortened to bps. It is not the same thing as the baud, which counts signalling events per second. The two agree only when each signal carries exactly one bit. Ten-megabit Ethernet over twisted pair, for instance, runs at 10 Mbit/s but sends about 20 million pulses per second because of its line coding. For scale, one cited figure puts the bare minimum for recognizable speech at around 800 bit/s, far below the 64 kbit/s of an ordinary digital phone line.

The bit per second is the reference unit for data transfer rate on this site.

Sources: Wikipedia: Bit (origin of the term); Wikipedia: Bit rate; Wikipedia: Baud

Related conversions

See all data transfer rate units.