UTF-8 Converts Characters to Bytes Before Bits
Unicode assigns a code point to each character, but UTF-8 determines the actual byte sequence used to store or transmit that character. This tool first encodes the input as UTF-8 and then prints every resulting byte as eight binary bits.
| Character | Unicode code point | UTF-8 hex bytes | Binary bytes |
|---|---|---|---|
A |
U+0041 |
41 |
01000001 |
中 |
U+4E2D |
E4 B8 AD |
11100100 10111000 10101101 |
😀 |
U+1F600 |
F0 9F 98 80 |
11110000 10011111 10011000 10000000 |
The important distinction is that a Unicode code point is not itself a byte. 中 is one character and one code point, but UTF-8 stores it as three bytes. The emoji 😀 uses four UTF-8 bytes.
When the Result Differs from ASCII
ASCII characters from U+0000 through U+007F use the same single-byte values in UTF-8, so A is 01000001 in both. Characters outside ASCII require multi-byte sequences whose leading bits describe the UTF-8 sequence length.
Use this page when you need the bytes of real Unicode text. If you only need the 7-bit ASCII repertoire, use Binary to ASCII or the ASCII table. For a deeper explanation, see ASCII vs Unicode vs UTF-8.