Decimal to BCD Converter

About this calculator

Binary-coded decimal (BCD) is a way of encoding a decimal number where each individual digit — not the number as a whole — is converted separately into its own 4-bit binary nibble. This converter takes a decimal number, splits it into digits, and encodes each one (0-9 maps to 0000-1001), so for example the decimal 47 becomes 0100 0111 in BCD rather than 101111 as it would in pure binary.

Because BCD keeps each decimal digit separately addressable, it avoids the rounding and conversion overhead of binary-decimal translation, which is why digital electronics designers building seven-segment displays and calculators, and embedded-systems engineers working with older financial and industrial hardware still use it — many digital clocks, calculators, and legacy point-of-sale systems process values internally in BCD specifically because it maps cleanly onto decimal display digits.