Binary Translator

Read binary as text, or turn any text into binary, emoji included.

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Translate
What goes between each group of 8 digits in the binary.

How to use Binary Translator

  1. Type or paste your text or binary. Detect works out which way to translate: 0s and 1s become text, anything else becomes binary.
  2. To force one direction, choose Text → binary or Binary → text.
  3. Binary can have spaces, commas or new lines between bytes, or none at all. Groups of 7 digits (7-bit ASCII) work too.
  4. For binary output, choose what goes between bytes: a space, nothing or a new line.
  5. Copy the translation, or download it as a .txt file.

Examples

A word to binary

Settings
  • Translate: Detect
Input 
Hello
Result 
01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111

Each letter becomes one byte of 8 digits. Capital H (01001000) and small h (01101000) differ in one digit.

Binary back to text

Settings
  • Translate: Detect
Input 
01001000 01101001 00100001
Result 
Hi!

Each group of 8 digits is one character: H, i and an exclamation mark.

Binary with no spaces

Settings
  • Translate: Detect
Input 
0100111101001011
Result 
OK

Without spaces, the digits are read 8 at a time.

Accents and emoji

Settings
  • Translate: Detect
Input 
café ☕
Result 
01100011 01100001 01100110 11000011 10101001 00100000 11100010 10011000 10010101

é takes 2 bytes and the coffee emoji 3, because the web stores text as UTF-8.

7-bit binary from a worksheet

Settings
  • Translate: Detect
Input 
1000011 1100001 1110100
Result 
Cat

Groups of 7 digits are old 7-bit ASCII. They read the same as 8-digit bytes with a 0 in front.

How it works

Computers store text as bytes, and a byte is 8 binary digits (bits). The translator turns each character into its bytes and shows them as 0s and 1s, or reads 0s and 1s back into characters. It uses UTF-8, the encoding nearly every website and app uses, so English letters take one byte each and accents, other alphabets and emoji take 2 to 4.

Detect decides the direction for you: input made only of 0s and 1s (at least 7 digits) is read as binary, and anything else is turned into binary. Choose Text → binary to translate digits themselves, like the number 101.

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Binary it can read

  • Bytes with spaces, commas or new lines between them: 01001000 01101001.
  • One long run with no spaces: read 8 digits at a time. If the length is a multiple of 7 but not of 8, it’s read 7 at a time.
  • 7-bit groups from school worksheets, like 1001000: a missing leading 0 makes no difference.
  • 0b prefixes, as programmers write them: 0b01001000.
  • Groups longer than 8 digits: each group is read as one character’s number (its Unicode code point), the way some other translators write emoji.

When the result looks wrong

  • “doesn’t split into bytes”: the binary has no spaces and its length isn’t a multiple of 8. A digit is missing or extra somewhere. Add spaces between the bytes to find it.
  • A � in the result: that byte is a control code (below 00100000), not a letter. Usually a digit is missing or a 0 and 1 are swapped.
  • Odd letters like é: text was encoded as UTF-8 and read back as single bytes, or the other way round. This tool reads UTF-8 and falls back to one character per byte only when the bytes aren’t valid UTF-8.
  • Capital or small letters swapped: capital and small letters differ in one digit, the third from the left. 01001000 is H, 01101000 is h.

The alphabet in binary

Capital Binary Small Binary
A 01000001 a 01100001
B 01000010 b 01100010
C 01000011 c 01100011
D 01000100 d 01100100
E 01000101 e 01100101
F 01000110 f 01100110
G 01000111 g 01100111
H 01001000 h 01101000
I 01001001 i 01101001
J 01001010 j 01101010
K 01001011 k 01101011
L 01001100 l 01101100
M 01001101 m 01101101
N 01001110 n 01101110
O 01001111 o 01101111
P 01010000 p 01110000
Q 01010001 q 01110001
R 01010010 r 01110010
S 01010011 s 01110011
T 01010100 t 01110100
U 01010101 u 01110101
V 01010110 v 01110110
W 01010111 w 01110111
X 01011000 x 01111000
Y 01011001 y 01111001
Z 01011010 z 01111010

Digits 0 to 9 are 00110000 to 00111001: the last four digits are the digit itself in binary (0101 is 5). A space is 00100000.

Questions

How do I convert text to binary?

Type the text here and the binary appears as you type. By hand: look up each character’s number in an ASCII or Unicode table (A is 65), write that number in base 2, and pad it to 8 digits (01000001).

How do I convert binary to text?

Paste the binary here. By hand: split it into groups of 8 digits, turn each group into a number (01000001 is 65), and look the number up in an ASCII table (65 is A).

What is "hello" in binary?

"hello" is 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111. With a capital H, "Hello" starts with 01001000 instead.

Why does each letter have 8 digits in binary?

Computers store text in bytes, and a byte is 8 bits (binary digits). 8 digits give 256 combinations, enough for every English letter, digit and symbol. Older 7-bit ASCII used 7 digits, which is why some worksheets show groups of 7.

What is the difference between ASCII and UTF-8?

ASCII covers 128 characters: English letters, digits, punctuation and a few control codes, one byte each. UTF-8 covers every Unicode character, including accents, other alphabets and emoji. It stores ASCII characters exactly as ASCII does and uses 2 to 4 bytes for the rest.

Updated October 18, 2026 · Works in current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari · Runs entirely in your browser