Mbps vs MBps – What’s the difference?

Mbps is short for Megabit-per-second. MBps is short for Megabyte-per-second. Both represent the amount of data transferred per second across a wired or wireless communication channel. Note the small ‘b’ for bit in Mbps and the capital ‘B’ for byte in MBps.

However they represent different data transfer rates.

  • 1 MBps is equivalent to 1,000,000 Bytes per second or 8,000,000 Bits per second.
  • 1 Mbps is equivalent to 1,000,000 Bits per second

1 MBps transfer rate is eight times faster than 1 Mbps transfer rate.

Convert between Mbps and MBps

There are 8 bits in every byte and therefore 1 MBps = 8 Mbps.

To convert from MBps to Mbps, multiply by 8. Conversely, to convert Mbps to MBps divide by 8. Alternatively, you can use the calculator below.


	

		

How are Mbps and MBps used?

Internet service providers and Mobile network operators specify the speed of their connection in Mbps. The picture below shows an offering with 300 Mbps and 100 Mbps on the download and upload, respectively.

We’ve never seen network bandwidths specified in Megabyte per second.

One possible reason that bandwidth is in Bits and not Bytes is that Mbps is a larger number and is better from a marketing perspective. 300 Mbps sounds faster than 38 MBps although they are equivalent!

In the world of computer storage, file size is specified in MB and conversion to MBps is an intermediate step to calculating the time it takes to transfer a file over a network connection.

Where is MBps used?

SD card vendors specify data transfer rates in Megabytes per second. It makes sense as the max data storage is specified in Megabyte as well. For instance, the SanDisk card below has a transfer rate of 200 MB/s.

SanDisk 128GB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I Memory Card - C10, U3, V30, 4K UHD, SD Card - SDSDXXD-128G-GN4IN

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