What is Data Rate Converter?

Data Rate Converter translates between bits per second, kilobits, megabits, gigabits, and their byte-based equivalents. Useful when comparing ISP plans or estimating download times.

The converter handles both bit-based units (bps, Kbps, Mbps, Gbps, Tbps) and byte-based units (B/s, KB/s, MB/s, GB/s, TB/s), with 8 bits per byte applied automatically. Reference rows compare your number against dial-up, 3G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 5, 5G, and fibre baselines, so you can quickly see how your speed measures up.

How to use

1. Enter a value and select the source unit (e.g., 100 Mbps).
2. View instant conversions across all data rate units — bits, bytes, and their multiples.
3. Copy any converted value or the full conversion table.

When to use

• Comparing two ISP plans where one advertises Mbps and the other quotes MB/s.
• Estimating how long a backup, game patch, or video upload will take.
• Sizing bandwidth for a video stream, VPN tunnel, or multi-camera RTSP feed.

Result

Your ISP advertises 500 Mbps — convert to see that's 62.5 MB/s, meaning a 4GB game downloads in about 64 seconds.

FAQ

What's the difference between Mbps and MB/s?

Mbps is megabits per second, MB/s is megabytes per second, and one byte is 8 bits. A 500 Mbps line therefore tops out at 62.5 MB/s of actual file throughput, before overhead from TCP, Wi-Fi, and routing.

Why does my 100 Mbps connection only download at around 11 MB/s?

Divide by 8 to get the theoretical max (12.5 MB/s), then subtract roughly 10 to 20 percent for protocol overhead, encryption, and the server's own upload limit. 11 MB/s on a 100 Mbps line is normal.

Are Kbps and KBps the same thing?

No. KBps (capital B) is kilobytes per second, eight times larger than Kbps (lowercase b). Most ISPs and speed tests use lowercase b. Most download dialogs in browsers and OSes use capital B.

Does this use decimal (1000) or binary (1024) multipliers?

Decimal, matching ISP and networking convention where 1 Kbps equals 1,000 bps and 1 Mbps equals 1,000,000 bps. Storage tools use binary (1 KiB equals 1,024 bytes), but bandwidth has standardised on decimal since the dial-up era.

What's a realistic Wi-Fi 5 speed in the real world?

The 866 Mbps figure in the reference table is the link rate on a single 80 MHz channel. Actual throughput on a laptop one room away from the router is more often 200 to 400 Mbps, with walls and 2.4 GHz interference cutting it further.

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