Knowledge Base

Difference GB/ GiB (MB/ MiB)

GB (and MB) is used everywhere on our website, while resource consumption is shown as GiB (and MiB) in the panel. Why is there this difference and what does it mean?

Gigabytes, meaning GB, use a decimal prefix. This means that 1GB equals 1000MB, similar to how, for example, 1kg equals 1000g.
Gibibytes, meaning GiB, in turn use a binary prefix. This means that 1 GiB equals 1024 MiB. So 1 GB is roughly 1.07 GiB.

For example, if you rent an 8 GB server, you actually get an 8 GiB (~ 8.59 GB) server. This difference is due to the fact that in normal usage only "GB" is used, while in the technical sense "GiB" is mostly used.