1 megabyte
1 MBData · definition
Decimal kB, MB and GB use powers of 1,000. KiB, MiB and GiB use powers of 1,024. The content of a file depends on encoding and compression.
Data & storage
Just how much data is 1 megabyte?
Media
1 MB
BYTES OF DATA
1 megabyte
Decimal kB, MB and GB use powers of 1,000.
1 MBData
0
Novel as plain text
The plain digital text of a book stored as an unformatted file, without images or layout.
1 MBData
0
Bar length represents bytes. The physical sizes of devices are schematic; encoding and compression affect file sizes.
A little perspective
1 megabyte is approximately equal to the data size of a novel as plain text.
Measurements, assumptions & sources +
1 megabyte
Data: 1 MB; definition.
Decimal kB, MB and GB use powers of 1,000. KiB, MiB and GiB use powers of 1,024. The content of a file depends on encoding and compression.
Novel as plain text
Data: 1 MB; example.
A chosen 1 MB unformatted text file. Books vary in length and encoding.
Defined examples — our methodology
The marked data is calibrated. Unmeasured illustration details are representative.
Measurement details
Why these numbers?
Compare 1 megabyte with the data size of a novel as plain text. The notes below explain how each value was chosen.
Novel as plain text
1 MBData · example
A chosen 1 MB unformatted text file. Books vary in length and encoding.
- Comparing
- Data ↔ Data
- Relative size
- 1 megabyte is approximately equal to the data size of a novel as plain text.
How to read the visual
The diagram uses the recorded measurements. Details outside the marked spans do not set the scale.
- The data size of a novel as plain text: This is an illustrative comparison value, not a claim that every example is the same.
Data size depends on encoding and compression; decimal GB and binary GiB are different units.
1,000,000 Bbytes
0.001 GBgigabytes
0.00093132 GiBgibibytes
1 × 10⁻⁶ TBterabytes
Change your perspective
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A little smaller. A little larger.