Megabits vs. Megabytes: What You Need to Know

Internet terminology is often maddeningly confusing. Case in point: Megabits and megabytes. Both refer to units of digital information, but the difference is subtle enough to cause plenty of confusion. Knowing the difference between the two terminologies can make all the difference when picking out an internet plan or figuring out how quickly you can download a file. Don’t worry — we’ll clear it all up so you never get scolded on Reddit again. 

Megabits vs. Megabytes

It all starts with bits and bytes. A bit is a single binary data point and the most basic unit of information in computing; it’s typically either a one or a zero. A byte is a collection of eight bits. Why eight? It takes eight bits to produce one unit of text, like a “J” or “#”. Bytes are used primarily to measure size or storage, like files of movies, images or documents. Bits are also measures of size, but they’re used in relation to speed. You’ll almost never hear someone talk about “bits” unless there’s a “per second” right after it. 

Now let’s add the “mega” part to the equation. Because bits and bytes are so small — just a single letter or number — they’re not really useful when we’re talking about bigger files like images or videos. “Mega” simply means “1 million.” One megabit is 1 million bits; one megabyte is equal to 1 million bytes or 8 megabits.

Internet service providers typically advertise speeds in megabits per second or the speed it takes to download or upload information to and from the internet.

Capitalization is everything

A lot of the confusion around megabits and megabytes happens when they’re abbreviated. A megabit is written as Mb, while a megabyte is MB. Internet speeds are always referred to as Mbps or megabits per second. Megabytes per second is almost always used to refer to how quickly a storage device can transfer data, like when a hard disk reads data or a file is uploaded to the cloud using an Ethernet connection. Megabytes per second is written as MBps or MB/s. 

Unit	Equal to	Example
Bit	One bit	1 or 0
Byte	Eight bits	One letter
Megabit (Mb)	1,000,000 bits	125-page Word doc
Megabyte (MB)	8,000,000 bits	250 HD photos

Since we know that 8 bits make up one byte, we can extend that knowledge further to make a simple formula for converting between megabytes and megabits:

Megabytes = megabits / 8

Megabits = megabytes x 8

If you’re trying to figure out how long it will take it download a file, you can use what you know about megabits and megabytes to do some quick math. For example, if you’re trying to download a 100MB file over a 100Mbps internet connection (or 12.5MB), you’ll divide the file size by the bandwidth in megabytes to get 8 seconds.

Naturally, there are a lot of factors that influence how fast or slow your internet is. This conversation formula is a helpful tool, but it most likely won’t be an exact measure of your internet speeds.

Why it matters

It’s important to know the difference between megabits and megabytes, primarily when you’re discussing internet speeds. It’s standard to use megabits per second, but you could hear someone refer to their 50 megabyte-per-second connection and consider it on the slow side. In fact, it’s equivalent to 400 megabits per second, which is quite speedy.

Plus, if you’re trying to compare internet speeds or figure out how long it will take to download or upload files, you’ll need to know that 8 megabits equals one megabyte.

FAQs