Text to Binary Converter (UTF-8)
Convert text to binary code: every character is encoded as UTF-8 and each byte shown as 8 bits, with space, comma, newline or no separator. Free, in-browser.
3 bytes
Each character is encoded as UTF-8 and every byte is written as 8 bits, so “é” becomes two bytes and an emoji four.
What is Text to Binary?
Type any text and see the binary representation of its bytes. Characters are first encoded as UTF-8, so plain ASCII letters take one byte (8 bits) while accented letters, other scripts and emoji take two to four bytes.
How to use Text to Binary
- Type or paste text into Text.
- Choose a Byte separator: space, none, new line or comma.
- Copy the binary output; the byte count is shown above it.
Example
Hi
01001000 01101001
When to use Text to Binary
Use it for teaching how text is stored, for puzzles, or to inspect the exact bytes of a string. If you need the Unicode code point of a character (U+00E9) rather than its UTF-8 bytes, use a Unicode/code point tool instead.
How Text to Binary works
The browser's TextEncoder converts the string to UTF-8 bytes. Each byte is written in base 2 and left-padded to 8 digits, then the bytes are joined with the chosen separator. For ASCII text this equals the classic "ASCII to binary" result; for other characters it shows the real UTF-8 byte sequence, not the Unicode code point.
Common Use Cases
- Show students how the letter A becomes 01000001
- Create binary messages for puzzles or escape rooms
- Inspect how many bytes an accented word or emoji takes in UTF-8
- Prepare bit strings for a networking or encoding exercise
FAQs
Why does "é" give 16 bits?
In UTF-8 the character é (U+00E9) is stored as two bytes, C3 A9, so the output is 11000011 10101001.
Is this the same as ASCII to binary?
For characters 0–127 yes, because UTF-8 is identical to ASCII in that range.
Can I convert the result back?
Yes, paste it into the Binary to Text tool; it accepts any of the separators used here.