Binary to ASCII Converter & ASCII Binary Table

What is ASCII?

ASCII, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding that assigns a number from 0 to 127 to 128 characters: English letters, digits, punctuation, the space and 33 control codes. Every ASCII code fits in 7 bits, so in an 8-bit byte the first bit is always 0.

ASCII was published in 1963 and is still the foundation of text on computers. UTF-8, the encoding of the web, keeps all 128 ASCII codes unchanged, which is why English text looks the same in both. To convert binary to ASCII, paste 8-bit bytes in the converter above; to go from ASCII to binary, switch to Text → Binary. The converter is set to strict ASCII, so it flags any character outside the table.

How to read the ASCII binary table

Each row shows one character with its code in three bases. Decimal is the code as an ordinary number, hex is the same value in base 16, and binary is the 8-bit byte a computer stores. For the letter A: decimal 65, hex 41, binary 01000001. To decode a byte by hand, find its binary in the table and read the character in the same row.

Printable ASCII characters (32–126)

These 95 characters are the ones you can see and type, starting with the space at code 32.

Printable ASCII characters in binary, decimal and hex
Char	Decimal	Hex	Binary
space	32	20	00100000
!	33	21	00100001
"	34	22	00100010
#	35	23	00100011
$	36	24	00100100
%	37	25	00100101
&	38	26	00100110
'	39	27	00100111
(	40	28	00101000
)	41	29	00101001
*	42	2A	00101010
+	43	2B	00101011
,	44	2C	00101100
-	45	2D	00101101
.	46	2E	00101110
/	47	2F	00101111
0	48	30	00110000
1	49	31	00110001
2	50	32	00110010
3	51	33	00110011
4	52	34	00110100
5	53	35	00110101
6	54	36	00110110
7	55	37	00110111
8	56	38	00111000
9	57	39	00111001
:	58	3A	00111010
;	59	3B	00111011
<	60	3C	00111100
=	61	3D	00111101
>	62	3E	00111110
?	63	3F	00111111
@	64	40	01000000
A	65	41	01000001
B	66	42	01000010
C	67	43	01000011
D	68	44	01000100
E	69	45	01000101
F	70	46	01000110
G	71	47	01000111
H	72	48	01001000
I	73	49	01001001
J	74	4A	01001010
K	75	4B	01001011
L	76	4C	01001100
M	77	4D	01001101
N	78	4E	01001110
O	79	4F	01001111
P	80	50	01010000
Q	81	51	01010001
R	82	52	01010010
S	83	53	01010011
T	84	54	01010100
U	85	55	01010101
V	86	56	01010110
W	87	57	01010111
X	88	58	01011000
Y	89	59	01011001
Z	90	5A	01011010
[	91	5B	01011011
\	92	5C	01011100
]	93	5D	01011101
^	94	5E	01011110
_	95	5F	01011111
`	96	60	01100000
a	97	61	01100001
b	98	62	01100010
c	99	63	01100011
d	100	64	01100100
e	101	65	01100101
f	102	66	01100110
g	103	67	01100111
h	104	68	01101000
i	105	69	01101001
j	106	6A	01101010
k	107	6B	01101011
l	108	6C	01101100
m	109	6D	01101101
n	110	6E	01101110
o	111	6F	01101111
p	112	70	01110000
q	113	71	01110001
r	114	72	01110010
s	115	73	01110011
t	116	74	01110100
u	117	75	01110101
v	118	76	01110110
w	119	77	01110111
x	120	78	01111000
y	121	79	01111001
z	122	7A	01111010
{	123	7B	01111011
\|	124	7C	01111100
}	125	7D	01111101
~	126	7E	01111110

ASCII control characters (0–31 and 127)

Control characters don’t print anything. They were designed to control teleprinters and terminals, and a few are still everywhere: tab (9), line feed (10) and carriage return (13) mark the ends of lines, and escape (27) starts terminal color codes.

ASCII control characters
Abbr.	Name	Decimal	Hex	Binary
NUL	Null	0	00	00000000
SOH	Start of heading	1	01	00000001
STX	Start of text	2	02	00000010
ETX	End of text	3	03	00000011
EOT	End of transmission	4	04	00000100
ENQ	Enquiry	5	05	00000101
ACK	Acknowledge	6	06	00000110
BEL	Bell	7	07	00000111
BS	Backspace	8	08	00001000
HT	Horizontal tab	9	09	00001001
LF	Line feed (new line)	10	0A	00001010
VT	Vertical tab	11	0B	00001011
FF	Form feed	12	0C	00001100
CR	Carriage return	13	0D	00001101
SO	Shift out	14	0E	00001110
SI	Shift in	15	0F	00001111
DLE	Data link escape	16	10	00010000
DC1	Device control 1 (XON)	17	11	00010001
DC2	Device control 2	18	12	00010010
DC3	Device control 3 (XOFF)	19	13	00010011
DC4	Device control 4	20	14	00010100
NAK	Negative acknowledge	21	15	00010101
SYN	Synchronous idle	22	16	00010110
ETB	End of transmission block	23	17	00010111
CAN	Cancel	24	18	00011000
EM	End of medium	25	19	00011001
SUB	Substitute	26	1A	00011010
ESC	Escape	27	1B	00011011
FS	File separator	28	1C	00011100
GS	Group separator	29	1D	00011101
RS	Record separator	30	1E	00011110
US	Unit separator	31	1F	00011111
DEL	Delete	127	7F	01111111

Patterns worth knowing in ASCII binary

Case is one bit. Uppercase and lowercase letters differ only in the bit worth 32: A is 01000001, a is 01100001.
Letters count from 1. The last five bits of a letter give its position in the alphabet: A is 00001, Z is 11010 (26).
Digits start with 0011. The digit characters 0–9 are codes 48–57, so the last four bits are the digit’s value: 7 is 00110111.
DEL is all ones. Code 127 is 01111111. On punched paper tape, punching every hole erased a character, which is where “delete” comes from.

For a printable list of letters and common words in binary, see the binary alphabet on the home page.

Frequently asked questions

What is the ASCII code for A in binary?

Capital A is ASCII code 65, which is 01000001 in binary and 41 in hex. Lowercase a is 97, or 01100001.

How many ASCII characters are there?

Standard ASCII has 128 characters, codes 0 to 127. Codes 0–31 and 127 are control characters; codes 32–126 are the 95 printable characters, including the space.

What is extended ASCII?

“Extended ASCII” is a loose name for 8-bit code pages that use codes 128–255 for extra characters. They differ from system to system, so today UTF-8 is used instead.

Is ASCII the same as UTF-8?

For codes 0–127, yes: every ASCII character has the same single byte in UTF-8. UTF-8 then adds multi-byte sequences for every other character in Unicode.

Binary to ASCII Converter