Binary to Text Converter

Convert binary to text and text to binary through UTF-8, so accented letters and emoji work, with hex and decimal byte views alongside and plain-English errors when the bits do not add up.

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Runs entirely in your browser. What you enter stays on your device — nothing is sent to a server. Verify it yourself

How do you convert binary to text?

Split the binary into groups of eight bits, convert each group to a byte value (01001000 is 72), then decode the bytes with the text encoding — normally UTF-8, in which 72 is the letter H. 01001000 01101001 is "Hi".

Cost: Free, no limits
Upload: None — runs on your device
Sign-up: Not required
Works offline: Yes, once loaded

How to convert binary to text

Choose the direction
Text to binary encodes what you type; Binary to text decodes what you paste.
Enter the text or the bytes
Type or paste text, or paste binary — spaces between bytes are optional. To decode hex or decimal bytes, change "Input is".
Copy the view you need
Binary, hex and decimal bytes are listed together with byte and bit counts. Untick the spaces option for one unbroken run.

Examples

Hi01001000 01101001 · hex 48 69 · decimal 72 105
0100100001101001Hi
Unbroken binary is split every eight bits.
é11000011 10101001
Two bytes, because é is outside ASCII.

Key features of the Binary to Text Converter

Text to binary and binary to text through UTF-8
Hex and decimal byte views for the same bytes
Binary accepted with or without spaces, and in 7-bit groups
Hex input with spaces, colons, commas or 0x prefixes
Errors that point to the bad character or byte by position
Byte and bit counts for every conversion

What it reads and writes

Text encoding

UTF-8 (ASCII-compatible)

Byte views

Binary, 8 bits per byte
Hex, 00 to FF
Decimal, 0 to 255

Separators accepted

Spaces and new lines
Commas
Colons (hex)
None (unbroken)

When should you use this?

Decoding a binary message from a puzzle, game or classroom exercise.
Seeing exactly which UTF-8 bytes a string produces while debugging.
Teaching how characters are stored as bits and bytes.

Limitations

UTF-8 only. Text saved in an older encoding such as Windows-1252 or UTF-16 will not decode correctly, because its bytes mean different characters.
Input is limited to 200,000 characters so a huge paste cannot freeze the page.
It converts text, not numbers: 101 is decoded as one byte, not as the number one hundred and one.

Troubleshooting

It says the bits are not a whole number of bytes

An unbroken run of binary must be a multiple of 8 bits. Look for a missing or extra digit, or add spaces between bytes.

The result is not valid UTF-8

Check around the byte the message names. If the bytes came from an older system, they may be in another encoding that this tool does not read.

Common mistakes to avoid

Pasting binary with one bit missing. Every byte after it shifts, so the text turns to nonsense or fails UTF-8 checks.
Expecting one byte per character for non-English text. Only ASCII characters are a single byte in UTF-8.
Running decimal byte values together. Separate them — 72 105, not 72105.

Pro tips

Tips for better results

Sanity check
English letters start with 010 or 011
Every basic English letter in UTF-8 binary starts with 0, capitals with 010 and lower case with 011 — a quick sanity check.
Garbled output
Count the bits — they should divide by eight
If decoded text looks shifted or garbled, count the bits: the total should be a multiple of eight.
Debugging
Use hex when comparing with other tools
Use the hex view when comparing with a debugger or hex editor; it is a quarter of the length of binary.

How text becomes binary

Computers store text as bytes, and a byte is eight bits — eight 0s and 1s. The rules that map characters to bytes are the encoding, and almost everything today uses UTF-8. In UTF-8 the basic English letters, digits and punctuation take one byte each and match ASCII exactly: H is 72, or 01001000. Other characters take two to four bytes — é is 11000011 10101001, and most emoji take four.

This binary translator encodes your text with the browser's own UTF-8 encoder and shows every byte three ways: binary, hex (two digits per byte, 00 to FF) and decimal (0 to 255).

Reading binary back

Binary code is accepted with or without spaces. Groups separated by spaces, commas or new lines can be up to eight bits each and are padded on the left, so the seven-bit groups some other converters produce (1001000 for H) still decode. An unbroken run must be a multiple of eight bits, because there is no way to tell where one byte ends otherwise.

The bytes are then checked against UTF-8's rules before anything is shown. If a byte cannot start a character, or a multi-byte character is cut short, the error names the byte by position — usually a sign that a bit was lost or a group was split in the wrong place.

The encoding is defined in RFC 3629, UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646. For whole numbers in binary rather than text, use the number base converter.

Privacy

The Binary to Text Converter runs entirely in your browser. What you enter and the result it produces stay on your own device — nothing is sent anywhere, because nothing needs to be.

You can confirm this rather than take our word for it: open your browser’s developer tools, watch the Network tab, and use the tool. No request carries your input. It also keeps working with the connection off.

Details are in the privacy policy.

What next?

Another way of writing bytes as text.

Encode text as Base64

Binary to Text Converter — questions

How do I convert binary to text?

Split the binary into 8-bit bytes, turn each into its number (01001000 is 72), and look the bytes up in the text encoding — UTF-8, where 72 is H. Paste the binary into the Binary to text tab and it does all three steps, with or without spaces.

Why does one character give more than eight bits?

Only the basic ASCII characters fit in one UTF-8 byte. Accented letters take two bytes, most other scripts three, and emoji four — so é is 16 bits and 😀 is 32.

What does "not a valid UTF-8 character" mean?

The bytes break UTF-8's rules — for example a byte such as 11111111 that can never appear, or the first byte of a two-byte character with nothing after it. Check for a missing or extra bit near the position the message gives.

Can I convert hex to text?

Yes. In the Binary to text tab, set the input to Hex and paste pairs of hex digits, with or without spaces, colons or 0x prefixes. Decimal byte values from 0 to 255 work the same way.

Is binary code the same as ASCII?

Binary is just the way the bytes are written down. ASCII is an old encoding covering 128 characters, and UTF-8 is a superset of it: any ASCII text gives exactly the same bytes in UTF-8.

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