Binary Translator: text to binary, done right

Convert text to binary and back with correct UTF-8 encoding, inspect every character’s bytes, and switch between binary, decimal, hexadecimal, and octal. Accurate, private, and free.

Text

Binary

Bits Separator Encoding: UTF-8 chars 0bytes 0bits 0

Value

Binary (base 2)

Decimal (base 10)

Hexadecimal (base 16)

Octal (base 8)

True UTF-8: emoji and accents round-trip Live per-character breakdown Binary, decimal, hex & octal Free, private, works offline

A translator that gets bytes right

Text and binary, without the bugs

Most online binary translators quietly mishandle anything beyond plain English. They read each character's code unit directly, which works for A to Z but produces wrong bytes for accented letters and breaks entirely on emoji, because those characters are not single bytes. This translator encodes text as true UTF-8, the standard the web runs on, so cafe with an accent and a smiling emoji convert to the exact bytes a computer would store and decode back perfectly. Type on either side and the other updates live; a per-character table shows every character's Unicode code point, decimal, hex, and binary; and a second mode converts whole numbers between binary, decimal, hexadecimal, and octal. Everything runs in your browser, with nothing uploaded.

Quick answer

How do you convert text to binary?

Each character is assigned a number by a standard, then that number is written in base 2. In UTF-8, the letter H is code point 72, which is 01001000 in eight bits, and i is 105, or 01101001, so Hi becomes 01001000 01101001. Characters beyond the basic set use two to four bytes: an accented e is two bytes, and most emoji are four. To go back, split the binary into 8-bit bytes, read each as a number, and decode those bytes as UTF-8. The translator above does all of this instantly in both directions.

The how it works section breaks down the character-to-bits pipeline step by step.

Step-by-step guide

How to use the binary translator

Type or paste your text

Enter text in the left box and the binary appears on the right instantly, one byte per character for plain English and more for accented letters and emoji. The character count, byte count, and bit count update as you type.

Or paste binary to decode

Paste binary into the right box to read it back as text. Spaces, commas, or no separators all work; the translator strips formatting, regroups the bits into bytes, and decodes them as UTF-8.

Choose your format

Pick 8-bit or 7-bit grouping and a separator of space, comma, or none. Eight-bit with spaces is the common, readable default; seven-bit suits classic ASCII exercises.

Read the per-character breakdown

The table below the boxes shows every character with its Unicode code point, decimal value, hex, and binary, which turns the tool into a learning aid rather than a black box.

Copy, download, or share

Copy either side, download the result as a text file, or copy a shareable link that reopens the exact conversion. Nothing is stored on a server; the link carries the text itself.

From letters to bits

How binary represents text

Computers store everything as bits, so text needs a numbering system: a character encoding. A character first maps to a number called a code point, that number is encoded into one or more bytes, and each byte is eight bits. The pipeline below traces a single character all the way down to the ones and zeros, and the place-value chart shows how eight bits add up to a byte's value.

The same four steps run for every character. For plain ASCII the code point fits in one byte; for the rest of Unicode, UTF-8 spreads it across two to four bytes using a defined bit pattern.

An 8-bit byte is read as a sum of powers of two. Each 1 contributes its column value; here 01001000 is 64 plus 8, which is 72, the code point for the capital letter H.

The differentiator

UTF-8: why emoji and accents work here

ASCII only ever defined 128 characters, enough for English but not for the world's writing systems or emoji. UTF-8 extends it without breaking it: the original ASCII characters stay one byte, and everything else uses two, three, or four bytes with a self-describing bit pattern. A translator that assumes one byte per character will corrupt any text containing these, which is the single most common bug in free binary tools. This one uses the browser's real UTF-8 encoder, so the bytes it shows are the bytes a computer actually stores.

How UTF-8 assigns bytes by code-point range. The leading bits of each byte announce how many bytes the character uses, which is how a decoder knows where one character ends and the next begins.
Code-point range	Bytes	Covers	Example
U+0000 to U+007F	1	Basic Latin (ASCII): A–Z, digits, punctuation	A → 01000001
U+0080 to U+07FF	2	Latin accents, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew	é → 11000011 10101001
U+0800 to U+FFFF	3	Most CJK, many symbols	€ → 3 bytes
U+10000 to U+10FFFF	4	Emoji, rare scripts, supplementary planes	😀 → 4 bytes

Beyond binary

Binary, decimal, hex, and octal

Binary is base 2, but the same value can be written in any base, and programmers lean on hexadecimal and octal because they pack binary neatly: one hex digit is exactly four bits, one octal digit exactly three. The Number bases tab converts a value between all four at once. The table shows the same small numbers across every base so the pattern is visible.

The numbers 0 to 16 in four bases. Notice hex reaching A to F for ten to fifteen, and binary gaining a digit at every power of two.
Decimal	Binary	Hex	Octal
0	0	0	0
1	1	1	1
2	10	2	2
3	11	3	3
4	100	4	4
5	101	5	5
6	110	6	6
7	111	7	7
8	1000	8	10
9	1001	9	11
10	1010	A	12
11	1011	B	13
12	1100	C	14
13	1101	D	15
14	1110	E	16
15	1111	F	17
16	10000	10	20

Reference

ASCII to binary reference table

The printable ASCII characters and their binary codes are the backbone of text encoding, and in UTF-8 these are identical to the single-byte values. This is a working subset; the translator handles the full Unicode range, but these are the codes worth recognizing on sight.

Selected printable ASCII characters with decimal, hex, and 8-bit binary. The full printable range runs from 32 (space) to 126 (tilde).
Char	Decimal	Hex	Binary	Char	Decimal	Hex	Binary
space	32	0x20	00100000	B	66	0x42	01000010
!	33	0x21	00100001	Z	90	0x5A	01011010
0	48	0x30	00110000	a	97	0x61	01100001
1	49	0x31	00110001	b	98	0x62	01100010
9	57	0x39	00111001	z	122	0x7A	01111010
@	64	0x40	01000000	{	123	0x7B	01111011
A	65	0x41	01000001	~	126	0x7E	01111110

Feature comparison

What most binary translators get wrong

Typical translator refers to the common behaviour across widely used free online binary tools as of 2026. Individual tools vary; verify against the specific tool you compare.
Capability	Typical translator	This translator
Accented characters	Often wrong bytes	Correct UTF-8 multi-byte encoding
Emoji and symbols	Corrupted or dropped	Full four-byte UTF-8 round-trip
Per-character breakdown	Not shown	Live table with code point, decimal, hex, binary
Decode tolerant of formatting	Needs exact spacing	Accepts spaces, commas, or none
Number-base conversion	Separate tool	Binary, decimal, hex, octal in one tab
Bit-grouping options	Fixed	8-bit or 7-bit, choosable separator
Shareable conversion	Rare	Encoded in the link
Privacy	Text sent to servers	Fully client-side; works offline

Who translates binary

One translator, many reasons

Students

Computer science homework

Encoding exercises ask you to convert text to binary by hand, then check the answer. The per-character table shows the working, code point to decimal to binary, so you can verify each step rather than just trusting a final string, and switch to 7-bit for classic ASCII assignments.

Developers

Debugging encodings

When text arrives garbled, the question is usually which bytes are really there. Paste it here to see the exact UTF-8 bytes and code points, spot the stray byte, and confirm whether a string is valid ASCII or carries multi-byte characters that a one-byte assumption would break.

Educators

Teaching how text is stored

The pipeline from character to code point to bytes to bits is abstract until it is visible. Type a word, show the table on screen, add an emoji to reveal four bytes, and the idea that everything is numbers underneath stops being a slogan.

Hobbyists & puzzlers

Codes, ciphers, and curiosity

Binary shows up in puzzle hunts, escape rooms, and maker projects. Encode a hidden message, decode one you found, or convert between bases for a microcontroller register, all without installing anything or sending the text anywhere.

What to avoid

Six binary conversion mistakes

Assuming one byte per character

It holds for English but fails the moment an accent or emoji appears, and a one-byte assumption turns those into wrong numbers or question marks.

Encode as UTF-8, which uses one to four bytes per character, as this translator does.

Mixing up bits and bytes

A byte is eight bits, so a 5-character ASCII word is 5 bytes but 40 bits; quoting one when you mean the other is a constant source of confusion.

Watch the live counters here: they report characters, bytes, and bits separately.

Dropping leading zeros

The code for a space is 100000, but as a byte it must be 00100000; trimming the leading zeros breaks fixed-width decoding.

Always pad each byte to its full width. The translator pads to 8 bits by default.

Confusing the bases

The string 1000 is eight in binary, a thousand in decimal, and different again in hex, so a number is meaningless without its base.

Label the base, or use the Number bases tab to see all four at once.

Regrouping binary wrongly

Decoding requires splitting the stream into the same size groups it was encoded in; an off-by-one in grouping scrambles every character after it.

Keep the byte width consistent; this tool regroups by your chosen width and flags leftover bits.

Trusting tools that hide their work

A translator that only emits a final string gives you no way to catch an encoding error or learn from the result.

Prefer a tool that shows the per-character breakdown, so every byte is accountable.

Glossary

Binary terms, defined

Bit: A binary digit, 0 or 1, the smallest unit of information. Eight bits make a byte.
Byte: A group of eight bits, able to represent 256 values (0 to 255). One ASCII character is one byte.
Binary (base 2): A number system using only 0 and 1, where each position is a power of two: 1, 2, 4, 8, and so on.
Code point: The number a character encoding assigns to a character, written like U+0041 for the letter A (decimal 65).
ASCII: A 1960s standard mapping 128 characters to the numbers 0 to 127, covering English letters, digits, and punctuation.
Unicode: The universal character set covering virtually every writing system and emoji, assigning each a unique code point.
UTF-8: The dominant way to encode Unicode as bytes: ASCII stays one byte, other characters use two to four, and the web runs on it.
Hexadecimal (base 16): A base-16 system using 0 to 9 then A to F, where one hex digit equals exactly four bits, making it a compact stand-in for binary.

FAQ

Binary translator questions, answered

How do I convert text to binary?

Type the text into the left box of the translator and the binary appears instantly on the right. Each character maps to a Unicode code point, which is encoded as one to four UTF-8 bytes, and each byte is shown as eight bits. The word Hi, for example, becomes 01001000 01101001.

How do I convert binary back to text?

Paste the binary into the right box. The translator removes any spaces or commas, splits the stream into 8-bit bytes, reads each as a number, and decodes the bytes as UTF-8 to rebuild the original text, including any accents or emoji.

Why do some characters become more than 8 bits?

Because they are not ASCII. UTF-8 encodes the original 128 ASCII characters in one byte, but accented letters and most non-Latin characters take two or three bytes, and emoji take four. The translator shows the full multi-byte binary for each, which is what a computer actually stores.

Does this translator handle emoji correctly?

Yes. It uses the browser's real UTF-8 encoder, so an emoji like the grinning face converts to its correct four bytes and decodes back to the same emoji. Many free translators assume one byte per character and corrupt emoji; this one does not.

What is the difference between a bit and a byte?

A bit is a single binary digit, 0 or 1. A byte is a group of eight bits and can represent 256 different values, from 0 to 255. One ASCII character occupies one byte, so it is also eight bits; the translator counts characters, bytes, and bits separately.

Is binary the same as ASCII?

Not quite. Binary is a number system, base 2. ASCII is a standard that assigns numbers to characters, and those numbers are then written in binary. So ASCII defines that A is 65, and binary expresses 65 as 01000001.

What is the binary code for a letter like A?

Capital A is code point 65, which is 01000001 in 8-bit binary. Lowercase a is 97, or 01100001. The 32-unit gap between uppercase and lowercase is why flipping a single bit changes the case of a letter.

Can I convert between binary, decimal, hex, and octal?

Yes: open the Number bases tab, enter a value, choose its base, and all four representations appear at once. Hexadecimal and octal exist largely because they map cleanly onto binary, one hex digit per four bits and one octal digit per three.

Why must each byte keep its leading zeros?

Because decoding relies on fixed-width groups. The code for a space is 32, which is 100000, but as a byte it must be written 00100000; without the leading zeros the byte boundaries shift and every following character is misread. The translator pads to 8 bits automatically.

Does pasting binary need exact spacing?

No. The decoder ignores spaces, commas, and line breaks, then regroups the bits into bytes itself, so a continuous stream or oddly spaced input both work. If the total number of bits is not a clean multiple of the byte width, it tells you rather than guessing.

Is my text private?

Completely. The encoding, decoding, and base conversion all run as JavaScript in your browser; nothing is uploaded, there are no ads or accounts, and the page works offline once loaded. A shareable link encodes the text in the URL only when you choose to create one.

What is 7-bit mode for?

Original ASCII used only 7 bits, since it defined just 128 characters. The 7-bit option strips the leading zero of each ASCII byte for exercises and contexts that expect classic 7-bit codes; 8-bit is the modern default and the only correct choice for non-ASCII text.

Is this binary translator free?

Yes: free, no account, no length caps, and no ads. It is a single self-contained page that loads once and then runs entirely on your device, including offline.