Binary Code Translator
Translate binary code to text and text to binary instantly online. Free binary to text converter - supports ASCII and UTF-8.
Three steps to get started
Choose direction
Select "Text → Binary" to encode or "Binary → Text" to decode.
Paste or type
Enter your text or binary code. Each letter maps to an 8-bit binary number.
Copy the result
Click Copy and use the binary or decoded text wherever you need it.
Translate between text and binary code
Binary to text conversion reads a sequence of 1s and 0s in groups of eight bits, treats each group as a number from 0 to 255, and looks that number up as a character. 01001000 is decimal 72, and 72 is the ASCII code point for the capital letter H. Encoding runs the same table backwards: every character becomes one 8-bit byte, conventionally written with spaces between bytes so the boundaries are visible.
Worked example - the word Hi encodes as 01001000 01101001:
H→ 72 →01001000(bits set: 64 + 8)i→ 105 →01101001(bits set: 64 + 32 + 8 + 1)- A space is 32 →
00100000; the digit0is 48, not 0 - Uppercase and lowercase differ by exactly 32, so bit 6 alone flips the case:
Ais01000001,ais01100001
Why some binary strings decode to gibberish
Nearly every failed decode comes down to one of three causes. Wrong grouping: if the total bit count is not a multiple of 8 the stream is misaligned, and a single missing bit shifts every subsequent character. Count your digits - 40 bits is five characters, 41 is a typo. 7-bit vs 8-bit: original ASCII is a 7-bit code, so older material sometimes omits the leading zero, writing 1001000 for H; pad it back to eight. Non-ASCII input: anything above code point 127 - é, -, emoji - is stored in UTF-8 as two to four bytes, so a single visible character can occupy 16 or 32 bits, and reading those bytes individually produces nonsense.
It is also worth separating binary from its neighbours. Hexadecimal is the same bytes written in base 16 (48 69 for Hi), which is four times more compact and what hex editors and network dumps actually show. Base64 repackages three bytes into four printable characters for safe transport. None of the three is encryption - binary is simply a different notation for the same data, and anyone can reverse it in seconds.
Typical reasons people land here: computer-science coursework on number bases, puzzle hunts and ARGs that hide messages in bit strings, reading a protocol spec that documents flag bits, or a novelty tattoo or engraving that needs to be verified before it is permanent. Both directions run entirely as JavaScript in your browser - the decoder ignores any character that is not a 0 or 1, so you can paste messy input with line breaks, commas, or stray text and still get a clean result.