Kilobyte Per Second (kB/s)

ComputingCurrent unit

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

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

1 kilobyte per second = 8,000 bits per second

About the kilobyte per second

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.

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

Kilobyte Per Second conversion chart

1 kilobyte per second expressed in every other data transfer rate unit:

Unit1 kilobyte per second
Bps8,000
Kbps8
Mbps0.008
Gbps0.000008
MB/s0.001
Tbps8×10⁻⁹
B/s1,000
GB/s0.000001
MiB/s0.0009536743164
Kibit/s7.8125
Mibit/s0.007629394531
Gibit/s0.000007450580597
KiB/s0.9765625
GiB/s9.313225746×10⁻⁷

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