💾 Text to Binary Translator

Translate text to binary code and binary back to text, with full UTF-8 so emoji and accents work. Also shows hex, decimal and octal bytes.

✓ Free✓ No Signup Required✓ Browser-Based
Binary (UTF-8)
01001000 01101001 00100000 11110000 10011111 10010001 10001011

7 bytes · 4 characters · 56 bits

Character by character

CharCode pointUTF-8 binaryHex
HU+0048 (72)0100100048
iU+0069 (105)0110100169
␠U+0020 (32)0010000020
👋U+1F44B (128075)11110000 10011111 10010001 10001011F0 9F 91 8B

What Text to Binary Translator Does

This binary translator converts text to binary and binary back to text in one box. It uses UTF-8, the encoding behind nearly every web page, so accented letters, other alphabets and emoji translate correctly instead of turning into question marks.

You can switch the number format to hex, decimal or octal to see the same bytes another way, and the character table breaks the text down one character at a time: the Unicode code point, the UTF-8 bytes in binary, and the same bytes in hex. It is a quick way to see why “A” takes one byte and “é” takes two.

When decoding, the translator is strict: it says exactly which group is not valid binary, when the total is not a whole number of bytes, or when the bytes are not valid UTF-8 — rather than silently printing garbage.

How to Use Text to Binary Translator

  1. Choose Text → Binary or Binary → Text
  2. Pick the number format: binary, hex, decimal or octal
  3. Type or paste your text or bytes
  4. Copy the result, or swap direction to check it
  5. Use the character table to see each character’s code point and bytes

Formula Used by Text to Binary Translator

Text → binary

character → Unicode code point → UTF-8 bytes → each byte as 8 binary digits

Worked example

The text “Hi”.

  1. H = U+0048 = byte 72
  2. 72 = 64 + 8 = 01001000
  3. i = U+0069 = byte 105 = 01101001

Result: 01001000 01101001

Reading a byte

value = Σ bitₖ × 2ᵏ, with k = 7 for the leftmost bit down to 0

Worked example

01000011

  1. 0×128 + 1×64 + 0×32 + 0×16 + 0×8 + 0×4 + 1×2 + 1×1
  2. = 64 + 2 + 1

Result: 67, which is the letter C.

How Many Bytes a Character Takes in UTF-8

Code pointsBytesBinary patternExamples
U+0000 – U+007F10xxxxxxxA–Z, a–z, 0–9, punctuation
U+0080 – U+07FF2110xxxxx 10xxxxxxé, ñ, ü, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic
U+0800 – U+FFFF31110xxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx€, most Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters
U+10000 – U+10FFFF411110xxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxxMost emoji, such as 👋 and 😀

Letters in Binary

LetterBinaryLetterBinary
A01000001a01100001
B01000010b01100010
C01000011c01100011
H01001000h01101000
O01001111o01101111
Z01011010z01111010
Space001000000 (digit)00110000

How to Read Your Result

Uppercase and lowercase differ by one bit

In ASCII, and therefore UTF-8, a lowercase letter is its uppercase letter plus 32 — the third bit from the left. A is 01000001 and a is 01100001. Early software used this to change case with a single bit operation.

Why decoding can fail

Multi-byte characters must arrive complete and in order. If you copy only part of the binary for an emoji, or a digit is mistyped so a byte no longer matches the UTF-8 patterns above, the text cannot be decoded. Fixing the byte count is usually enough.

Limitations & Accuracy Notes

  • Only UTF-8 is supported for decoding; text saved in older encodings such as Windows-1252 or UTF-16 will not decode correctly.
  • The character table lists the first 40 characters.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you convert text to binary?
Each character is turned into bytes using UTF-8, and each byte is written as eight binary digits. “H” is byte 72, which is 01001000; “i” is 105, or 01101001. So “Hi” in binary is 01001000 01101001.
How do I translate binary to text?
Choose Binary → Text and paste the ones and zeros. Groups of eight bits can be separated by spaces or run together; the translator reads them as bytes and decodes them as UTF-8. If a group is not valid, it tells you which one.
Why does an emoji become four bytes?
UTF-8 uses one byte for basic English letters, digits and punctuation, two bytes for most accented and other European letters, three for most other scripts, and four for emoji and rarer characters. 👋 is U+1F44B, which takes four bytes: 11110000 10011111 10010001 10001011.
Is binary the same as ASCII?
Not exactly. ASCII is a 7-bit code for 128 characters; binary is just how the numbers are written. For plain English text, ASCII and UTF-8 produce the same bytes, so the binary is identical. UTF-8 extends it to every Unicode character.
What does “not valid UTF-8” mean?
The bytes do not form complete UTF-8 characters — often because a multi-byte character was cut off, a bit was mistyped, or the data was never text. Check that each group has exactly eight digits and that nothing is missing at the end.
Can I get hex or decimal instead of binary?
Yes. Change the number format to hex, decimal or octal to see the same bytes that way, or to decode text written in those formats. Hex is the most compact: “Hi” is 48 69.
By OnlineToolHubs Team • September 2026