Kbps to Mbps Converter

How many Kbps are in one Mbps?

One megabit per second (Mbps) is exactly 1,000 kilobits per second (Kbps). Data rates are written with the decimal SI prefixes, where kilo means a thousand and mega means a million, so the awkward 1,024 that shows up with file sizes never appears in this conversion.

1 Mbps = 1,000 KbpsIn the other direction, 1 Kbps = 0.001 Mbps.

Both units count bits that pass a point each second. Kbps is the scale of voice calls, old dial-up modems and audio streams; Mbps is the scale of broadband, Wi-Fi and video.

Kbps versus Mbps

A bit is a single binary digit, a 0 or a 1. Kbps counts thousands of those bits each second and Mbps counts millions, so the two units measure the same thing at different scales. A 56 Kbps modem and a 56 Mbps connection are both quoted in bits per second; the second is simply a thousand times faster.

Pay attention to the letter case. A lowercase b means bit and an uppercase B means byte, so Kbps is not the same as KBps (kilobytes per second), which is eight times bigger. Strictly speaking the SI symbol for kilo is a lowercase k, which is why standards documents write kbps; the capital K in Kbps is a common informal habit with the same meaning.

How to convert Kbps to Mbps

1. Start with the speed in kilobits per second.
2. Divide it by 1,000, which is the same as moving the decimal point three places to the left.
3. Read the result as megabits per second.

Mbps = Kbps ÷ 1,000

The converter rounds its answer to four decimal places. Anything below roughly 0.05 Kbps works out to less than 0.00005 Mbps and is therefore shown as 0.

Kbps to Mbps conversion table

The 56 Kbps row is the nominal ceiling of a dial-up modem, 64 Kbps is one digital voice channel, and 1,544 Kbps is the line rate of a North American T1 circuit.

Common mistakes

• Dividing by 1,024. That factor belongs to storage sizes such as KB and MB. Network speeds are decimal, so the divisor is 1,000.
• Mixing bits and bytes. A plan sold as "up to 8 Mbps" moves at most about 1 megabyte per second, not 8. The MB to Mbps converter covers that step.
• Treating a bitrate as a guarantee. A stream's bitrate is what it needs; a plan's speed is a ceiling. Real throughput is usually lower than the advertised figure, so leave some headroom.

To estimate how long a file takes at a given speed, use the download time calculator. To go the other way, from megabits to kilobits, use the Mbps to Kbps converter.