The Bandwidth Calculator converts data units, estimates download time from file size and connection speed, and estimates website bandwidth needs.
| bits (b) | 4000000000 |
| kilobits (kb) | 4000000 |
| megabits (mb) | 4000 |
| gigabits (gb) | 4 |
| terabits (tb) | 0.004 |
| Bytes (B) | 500000000 |
| Kilobytes (KB) | 500000 |
| Megabytes (MB) | 500 |
| Gigabytes (GB) | 0.5 |
| Terabytes (TB) | 0.0005 |
Download time: 0 hours 13 minutes 20.0 seconds
| Download time | 0 hours 13 minutes 20.0 seconds |
| In seconds | 800 |
| Monthly data transfer | 450 GB |
| Average bandwidth needed | 1.3889 Mbit/s |
A byte is 8 bits. Internet speeds are quoted in bits per second (Mbit/s, Mbps) while file sizes are in bytes (MB, GB), which is why a 100 Mbps connection downloads at most about 12.5 MB per second. This calculator uses decimal (SI) prefixes: 1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes.
Time = file size in bits ÷ speed in bits per second.
Worked example: a 500 MB file over a 5 Mbit/s link takes 500 × 8 ÷ 5 = 800 seconds, about 13 minutes 20 seconds. Real downloads are usually 10–20% slower because of protocol overhead and congestion.
Monthly transfer ≈ page views per day × 30 × average page size × a redundancy factor for peaks and bots. Hosting plans often list monthly transfer limits in GB or TB.
What is the difference between MB and MiB? MiB uses 1,048,576 bytes (binary).
What speed do I need for 4K streaming? About 25 Mbps.
Why is upload slower? Many home connections are asymmetric.