Megabyte

This article is about the decimal unit of data. For binary unit of 1024² bytes, see mebibyte. For other uses, see Megabyte (disambiguation).

"MByte" redirects here. For the battery electric car from Byton, see Byton M-Byte.

Not to be confused with megabit.

megabyte
A PlayStation 2 memory card has a capacity of 8 megabytes (MB).
General information
Unit system	Unit derived from bit
Unit of	Digital information, data size
Symbol	MB

Multiple-byte units

Decimal				Binary
Value		SI		Value		IEC		JEDEC
1000	103	kB	kilobyte	1024	210	KiB	kibibyte	KB	kilobyte
10002	106	MB	megabyte	10242	220	MiB	mebibyte	MB	megabyte
10003	109	GB	gigabyte	10243	230	GiB	gibibyte	GB	gigabyte
10004	1012	TB	terabyte	10244	240	TiB	tebibyte	TB	terabyte
10005	1015	PB	petabyte	10245	250	PiB	pebibyte	—
10006	1018	EB	exabyte	10246	260	EiB	exbibyte	—
10007	1021	ZB	zettabyte	10247	270	ZiB	zebibyte	—
10008	1024	YB	yottabyte	10248	280	YiB	yobibyte	—
10009	1027	RB	ronnabyte	10249	290	RiB	robibyte	—
100010	1030	QB	quettabyte	102410	2100	QiB	quebibyte	—
Orders of magnitude of data

The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Its recommended unit symbol is MB. The unit prefix mega is a multiplier of 1000000 (10⁶) in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one megabyte is one million bytes of information. This definition has been incorporated into the International System of Quantities.

In the computer and information technology fields, other definitions have been used that arose for historical reasons of convenience. A common usage has been to designate one megabyte as 1048576bytes (2²⁰ B), a quantity that conveniently expresses the binary architecture of digital computer memory. Standards bodies have deprecated this binary usage of the mega- prefix in favor of a new set of binary prefixes, by means of which the quantity 2²⁰ B is named mebibyte (symbol MiB).