Do you know the difference between a megabit (Mb) versus a megabyte (MB)?

While the two sound the same and have the same abbreviation, they're actually very different. And they're both quite important, as they determine the speed of data, such as your internet connection (that you're paying big bucks for) and the size of data on storage devices, like hard drives.

Yes, it's a little confusing, but today we're going to explain everything you need to know about the megabit (Mb) and the megabyte (MB).

What Is a Megabit and a Megabyte?

Binary Bits of Data

First, we need to go back to the piece that starts it all—the bit. A bit is a binary digit, the smallest unit of digital, computerized data. Eight of these bits compose a byte. A megabit contains about 1 million of those bits, and eight megabits make up a single megabyte. That's the only difference between megabits and megabytes.

For the most part, data sizes for hard drives and files are usually measured with "bytes," whereas data for broadband goes by "bits."

You may be more familiar with gigabytes (GB) or even terabytes (TB), as they are more commonly used these days in terms of data storage. A gigabyte holds about 1000 megabytes of data, and a terabyte is 1000 gigabytes.

When you look at it that way, a terabyte is just a lot of bits in one place. Pretty crazy when you think about it, right?

What's the Difference Between a Megabit (Mb) and a Megabyte (MB)?

The abbreviations are also very important to take note of. Since a megabit is a smaller unit than a megabyte, it features the lowercase "b," making its abbreviation "Mb." Megabyte is larger; therefore, it gets the capital "B" in "MB."

Both megabits and megabytes are commonly used to indicate the data transfer speed of something, such as hard drives or internet connections. However, if you're just referring to hard drives, then the abbreviation remains "Mb" or "MB."

But in terms of internet speeds, you refer to the number of megabits or megabytes transferred each second. And that is the origin of abbreviations "Mbps" and "MBps." The "ps" stands for "per second."

Why You Should Know Both Megabit and Megabyte

megabit does not equal megabyte

We all need internet access at home, and these days, it's always about broadband from the cable company. Often, they feature packages where you can get speeds of "up to 50Mbps" or "100Mbps" and the like. It's important to know what exactly you're paying for.

You may think that a 100Mbps package sounds like super-fast speeds, and while you won't be wrong (it's still plenty fast), don't expect to download a 100MB file in a second.

That's because when Internet Service Providers (ISP) sell you an "up to 100Mbps" connection, that is actually referring to 100 megabits per second and not 100 megabytes per second.

Ookla Speed Test Results

If you have a 100Mbps connection, that's actually 12.5MBps, which doesn't sound as impressive. You get this calculation by dividing 100 by eight (eight bits go into one megabit). With a 400Mbps connection at home, it translates to 50MBps. So again, the first number is a lot more impressive than the smaller one, right?

Marketing Tactics

ISPs use megabits as a marketing tactic to make their packages sound more enticing to potential customers. That's because these numbers are larger and look more monumental than their smaller counterparts.

They also say that you can get up to those speeds, so it's not guaranteed all the time, especially during peak hours.

Services like SpeedTest provide you with a simple test of your internet speed, and they always deliver results in Mbps since it's standard of the industry. However, you can change the setting of your speed test service to have it say MBps instead of Mbps.

Say you want to download a 750MB file. This file is also the same as 6,000Mb (6,000 divided by 8 is 750). If you have a 50Mbps connection, that file will be downloaded in two minutes. A slower connection, say 10Mbps, would take 10 minutes to download the same file.

Hard drive

Buying a New Hard Drive

If you are in the market for a new hard drive for your computer, or perhaps even an external hard drive or another storage device, then you should also pay attention to the capacity. However, for drive sizes, few display the capacity as megabytes as most use gigabytes nowadays.

When you shop for drives, you'll usually find sizes like 256GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB, and so on. These numbers translate into 256,000MB, 500,000MB, and 750,000MB, respectively.

Since 1TB is 1000GB, that means about 1,000,000MB. The formula for finding out how many megabytes something holds is to multiply the gigabyte value by 1000.

Usually, to talk about how fast a connection is, you just use bits (Mb for most internet speeds). Use Bytes (MB, GB, TB, etc.) to refer to storage and file sizes.

Related: Buying a New Hard Drive: Things You Must Know

How Do I Calculate the Difference Between a Megabit and Megabyte?

It's simple enough to remember: a megabyte (MB) contains eight (8) megabits (Mb). Whenever you see something in MB, multiply that by eight to find how many megabits it is.

For the purpose of conversions, let's make x stand for MB and y represent Mb.

        xMB x 8 = yMb
    

If you want to convert megabits (Mb) into megabytes (MB), divide them by eight.

        yMb / 8 = xMB
    

To figure out how long it should take to download a file (based on the speed cap you pay for), try this formula, where p stands for the speed you're paying for, and t is your download time.

        (xMB x 8) / pMbps = t (in seconds)
    

Then, of course, you'll want to convert those seconds into minutes for a better representation of how long it will ideally take.

NB: In reality, remember that your internet speed won't always equal the maximum advertised speeds. That means the actual time will likely be more.

If you're going from gigabytes to megabytes, times the gigabyte number (let's go with a for gigabyte) by 1000 to find out how many megabytes that is.

        aGB x 1000 = xMB
    

It's highly recommended to use Google's search engine to convert digital storage units, too, if you're not good with math.

Megabits and Megabytes Are Not the Same

Yes, it's slightly confusing when you see Mb and MB used often, and you thought they were interchangeable. Unfortunately, it couldn't be farther from the truth. Hopefully, you now understand the differences between a megabit (Mb) and a megabyte (MB) and can convert them easily.

Next, find out why a 1TB drive only has 931GB of space in our in-depth explanation of hard drive sizes.