Text to Binary Converter
Convert text to binary and binary to text online free — real UTF-8 bytes, so accents, Hindi and emoji round-trip exactly. Hex and decimal too, all in your browser.
01001000 01101001 00100000 11110000 10011111 10010001 10001011
1 character takes more than one byte. That is UTF-8 working as intended: only the 128 ASCII characters fit in a single byte, so an accented letter takes two, most Indian scripts three, and an emoji four. A converter that gives one 8-bit group for “é” is writing its Latin-1 value, which will not decode back to é anywhere that expects UTF-8.
Character by character
Text is always encoded as UTF-8, the encoding of nearly every web page, file and API, so the binary here match what is actually stored. Need to convert a single number between binary, hex and decimal instead? Use the Base Converter. Everything runs in your browser; nothing you type is uploaded.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I convert text to binary?
- Type or paste the text on the Text → Binary tab and the binary appears underneath, one 8-bit group per byte. Each character is first turned into its UTF-8 bytes and each byte is then written as eight 0s and 1s, so 'Hi' becomes 01001000 01101001: H is byte 72 and i is byte 105. The table under the output shows that split for every character, and you can choose a space, nothing or a new line between the bytes.
- Why does one character sometimes give two, three or four bytes?
- Because only the 128 ASCII characters — English letters, digits and common punctuation — fit in a single byte. UTF-8 spends two bytes on an accented letter such as é, three on most Indian, Chinese and Japanese characters and on the € and ₹ signs, and four on an emoji. That is correct: it is exactly what a web page, a file or an API stores. A converter that prints one 8-bit group for é is showing its old Latin-1 value, which decodes to a replacement mark anywhere that expects UTF-8.
- How do I convert binary back to text?
- Switch to Binary → Text and paste the digits. Bytes can be separated by spaces, commas or new lines, or run together with no separator at all, in which case they are read eight bits at a time. 0b prefixes are ignored, and 7-bit groups — ASCII written without its leading zero, common in textbooks — are recognised and read correctly rather than rejected. A digit other than 0 or 1, or a run that is not a whole number of bytes, is reported with the group it is in.
- What does 'not valid UTF-8' mean when I decode?
- It means the bytes you pasted are not a legal UTF-8 sequence — usually because they were produced by a converter that wrote accented letters as single Latin-1 bytes, or because a byte was lost or mistyped. The text is still shown, with the � replacement mark where it breaks, the position of the first bad byte is given, and a second reading that treats every byte as one Latin-1 character is shown underneath, which is often the text that was meant.
- Can it convert text to hex or decimal as well?
- Yes. The 'Write bytes as' menu switches the output between binary, hexadecimal (two digits per byte, the form used in hex editors and escape sequences) and decimal (0 to 255 per byte). The same menu on the Binary → Text tab reads hex — with or without 0x or \x prefixes — and decimal byte lists back into text.
- Is my text uploaded anywhere?
- No. The conversion runs entirely in your browser, so whatever you type or paste never leaves your device. There is no signup and nothing is stored.