Hex to Binary Converter
This tool turns any hexadecimal value into binary, converting one hex digit at a time into
its 4 digit nibble so you can see exactly where every part of the result came from. Type or paste a
hex value and the binary comes back immediately, with the digit by digit breakdown available underneath.
How to convert hex to binary
- Type or paste your hex value into the input box. A leading 0x is fine and gets ignored automatically.
- The tool reads one hex digit at a time, left to right.
- Each digit is converted to its own 4 digit binary nibble.
- The nibbles are joined together in order to give the final binary result. Expand the breakdown to see which nibble came from which digit.
How hex becomes binary
Hexadecimal exists mainly as a shorthand for binary. Every single hex digit, 0 through 9 and then A through F, lines up with exactly one 4 digit binary value, a nibble, because 4 binary digits can represent 16 possible values, the same 16 values hex covers. Here is hex D6 converted one digit at a time.
|
Hex digit |
Binary nibble (4 digits) |
|---|---|
|
D |
1101 |
|
6 |
0110 |
Joining the nibbles gives 11010110, so hex D6 equals binary 11010110, the same pair used on the Binary to Hex Converter, just worked from the other direction.
The word hexadecimal itself is a fairly recent addition to computing language. Early documentation from the 1950s used sexadecimal instead, a more literally correct blend of Latin and Greek, but the term did not sit well in formal technical writing. IBM and the rest of the industry had settled on hexadecimal by the early 1960s, and it has stuck ever since.
Where this tool actually gets used
- Who lands here.
- Programmers reading a hex dump in a debugger, students working through a number systems assignment, and anyone decoding a MAC address, a color code, or a memory address who wants the raw bits, not just the hex.
Binary to Hex Converter and Hex to Text Converter
Last updated September 2026. Every conversion here runs the standard hex digit to nibble mapping. See the Binary Code Glossary for any term on this page you are not sure about.