This is a list of orders of magnitude for data (or information), measured in bits. This article assumes a formal attitude towards terminology. That means two things:

1. A group of 8 bits in a computer is called an octet. A byte is the same for most practical purposes, but does not equal 8 bits on all computer architectures.
2. The decimal prefixes kilo, mega etc. are strictly powers of 10. The powers of 2 are the binary prefixes kibi, mebi etc.

Accordingly, 8192 bits of data are a kibioctet and 8000 bits are a kilooctet.

---

Contents

1 1 bit (True or false) 2 10 bits 3 102 bits 4 103 bits – One kilobit 5 104 bits 6 105 bits 7 106 bits – One megabit 8 107 bits 9 108 bits 10 109 bits – One gigabit 11 1010 bits 12 1011 bits 13 1012 bits – One terabit 14 1013 bits 15 1015 bits – One petabit 16 1016 bits 17 1017 bits 18 1018 bits – One exabit 19 1019 bits 20 1020 bits 21 1021 bits – One zettabit 22 1022 bits

1 bit (True or false)

• 1.5 bit – Average information entropy per character in English text.
• 4 bits – A semioctet or nibble. The size of a hexadecimal digit.
• 5 bits – Size of code points in the Baudot code, used in telex communication.
• 6 bits – Size of code points in the Braille code, a tactile writing system for the blind.
• 7 bits – Size of code points in the ASCII character set.
• 8 bits – An octet. Equivalent to a byte on many computer architectures.

10 bits

• 16 bits – In many programming languages, the size of an integer capable of holding 65,536 different values.
• 32 bits – Size of an integer capable of holding 4,294,967,296 different values.
• 32 bits – Size of an IEEE 754 single-precision floating point number.
• 32 bits – Size of addresses in IPv4, the current Internet protocol.
• 56 bits – Cipher strength of the DES encryption standard.
• 64 bits – Size of an integer capable of holding 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 different values.
• 64 bits – Size of an IEEE 754 double-precision floating point number.

10² bits

• 128 bits – Size of addresses in IPv6, the coming Internet protocol.
• 128 bits – Minimum cipher strength of the Rijndael and AES encryption standards.

10³ bits – One kilobit

• 1,024 bits (2¹⁰ bits) – One kibibit.
• 8,000 bits (10³ octets) – One kilooctet.
• 8,192 bits (2¹³ bits, 2¹⁰ octets) – One kibioctet.

10⁴ bits

• 22,500 bits – Amount of information in a typical non-fiction book.
• 27,000 bits – Amount of information in a typical phone book.
• 42,000 bits – Amount of information in a typical reference book.

10⁵ bits

10⁶ bits – One megabit

• 1,048,576 bits (2²⁰ bits) – One mebibit.
• 8,000,000 bits (10⁶ octets) – One megaoctet.
• 8 Mbits – Typical computer screen capacity.
• 8,388,608 bits (2²³ bits, 2²⁰ octets) – One mebioctet.

10⁷ bits

• 11,796,480 bits – Capacity of a 3.5" floppy disk, colloquially known as 1.44 megabyte.
• 25 Mbits – Amount of data in a typical color slide.
• 25,964,951 bits – Size of the largest known Mersenne prime. All 25,964,951 bits are 1.

10⁸ bits

• 150 Mbits – Amount of data a human eye can capture at a glance.
• 150 Mbits – Amount of data in a large foldout map.

10⁹ bits – One gigabit

• 1,073,741,824 bits (2³⁰ bits) – One gibibit.
• 8,000,000,000 bits (10⁹ octets) – One gigaoctet.
• 5.45 × 10⁹ bits (650 mebioctets) – Capacity of a regular compact disc.
• 8,589,934,592 bits (2³³ bits, 2³⁰ octets) – One gibioctet.

10¹⁰ bits

• 1.28 × 10¹⁰ bits – Capacity of the human genome, 3.2 billion base pairs.

10¹¹ bits

• 1.46 × 10¹¹ bits (17 gibioctets) – Capacity of a double-sided, dual-layered DVD.
• (approximately) 4.12 × 10¹² bits (515 gibioctets) – As of 2002, data of pi to the largest number of digits ever calculated (1.24 trillion).

10¹² bits – One terabit

• 10¹² bits (100 gigaoctets) – Approximate size of all Wikimedia projects.
• 1.6 &times 10¹² bits (200 gigaoctets) – Capacity of a hard disk that would be considered moderately large in 2004.

10¹³ bits

• 10¹⁴ bits
• 1.5 × 10¹⁴ bits (17 teraoctets) – Amount of information in the Library of Congress, if it were all digitized.

10¹⁵ bits – One petabit

• 2.4 × 10¹⁵ bits (300 teraoctets) – Size of the Internet Archive in 2004.

10¹⁶ bits

• 4.5 × 10¹⁶ bits (5 petaoctets) – Estimated hard drive space in Google's server farm in 2004.

10¹⁷ bits

10¹⁸ bits – One exabit

• 1.6 × 10¹⁸ bits (200 petaoctets) – Total amount of printed material in the world.

10¹⁹ bits

10²⁰ bits

10²¹ bits – One zettabit

10²² bits

• 1.8 × 10²² bits – amount of information which can be stored in 1 gram of DNA