What Comes After a Petabyte? Every Storage Unit Explained

What comes after a petabyte is one of the most searched data storage questions — and the full answer covers six more units you probably have not heard of, ending with two that were only officially named in 2022. This guide covers every data storage unit from the smallest (a bit) to the largest (a quettabyte), with real-world size comparisons for each, a complete reference chart, the binary vs decimal confusion explained plainly, and a direct answer to what comes after both a petabyte and a yottabyte.

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Quick answer: After a petabyte comes an exabyte (1,000 petabytes), then a zettabyte, yottabyte, ronnabyte, and finally a quettabyte — the largest officially named unit. After a yottabyte specifically comes a ronnabyte (10²⁷ bytes), followed by a quettabyte (10³⁰ bytes), both officially adopted by the BIPM in November 2022.

Complete Data Storage Units Chart — Smallest to Largest (What Comes After a Petabyte and Beyond)

Starting From the Beginning: Bits and Bytes

The Bit

The bit is the smallest unit of data storage. A bit holds exactly one binary digit — either a 0 or a 1. Everything a computer does, at its most fundamental level, is a sequence of bits.

The word “bit” comes from binary digit. It is abbreviated as a lowercase b — important to know because uppercase B means byte, not bit. This distinction matters when reading internet speeds: a 100 Mbps connection is megabits per second, not megabytes. To convert: divide by 8.

The Byte

Eight bits make one byte (B). A single byte can represent 256 different values (2⁸ = 256), which is enough to encode any standard keyboard character, digit, or punctuation mark. The ASCII standard uses one byte per character, so the word “hello” is 5 bytes.

Every larger data storage unit is a multiple of bytes.

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Kilobyte (KB) — 1,000 Bytes

A kilobyte is approximately 1,000 bytes. In practical terms: a plain text email without attachments is around 1–5 KB. A basic webpage’s HTML source code is 2–20 KB. One minute of typed conversation is roughly 1 KB.

Real-world kilobyte examples: – Plain text email: 1–5 KB – Low-resolution icon or thumbnail image: 5–50 KB – One page of a Word document (text only): 20–30 KB – Simple HTML webpage: 10–100 KB

The kilobyte is where the binary/decimal confusion begins. In strict decimal terms, 1 KB = 1,000 bytes. In the binary system computers historically used, 1 KB = 1,024 bytes (2¹⁰). For a more detailed explanation of this, see the binary vs decimal section below.

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Megabyte (MB) — 1,000 Kilobytes

A megabyte is 1,000 kilobytes, or roughly one million bytes. This is the unit most people encounter daily for photo and audio file sizes.

Real-world megabyte examples: – A 3-minute MP3 song at standard quality: 3–5 MB – A JPEG photo from a smartphone: 2–8 MB – A RAW photo from a professional camera: 20–50 MB – A minute of standard-definition video: 60–150 MB – A 200-page PDF document: 1–10 MB – A mobile app: 10–200 MB

Gigabyte (GB) — 1,000 Megabytes

A gigabyte is 1,000 megabytes, or one billion bytes. This is the standard unit for measuring smartphone storage, RAM, game file sizes, and film downloads.

Real-world gigabyte examples: – A 1080p HD film: 1.5–4 GB – A modern video game: 20–150 GB – One hour of 4K video: 7–20 GB – A smartphone with 128 GB storage: holds roughly 30,000 photos or 60 hours of video – The human genome: approximately 1.5 GB

The average smartphone today ships with 128–256 GB of storage. External hard drives commonly range from 1 TB to 8 TB — meaning they hold 1,000 to 8,000 gigabytes.

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Terabyte (TB) — 1,000 Gigabytes

A terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes, or one trillion bytes. Consumer hard drives and cloud storage plans are routinely measured in terabytes.

Real-world terabyte examples: – A 1 TB external hard drive: approximately 200,000 smartphone photos or 500 hours of HD video – A 2 TB hard drive: the storage most desktop computers ship with today – Netflix reportedly stores around 36 PB of video data — meaning 36,000 TB – The Library of Congress contains approximately 10 TB of text data

If you have ever bought a 1 TB or 2 TB hard drive, you have already held a terabyte in your hand.

What Comes After a Terabyte? — Petabyte (PB)

A petabyte is 1,000 terabytes, or 10¹⁵ bytes. This is where individual consumers no longer encounter these numbers in daily life — petabytes belong to cloud providers, governments, research institutions, and large corporations.

Real-world petabyte examples: – Google processes approximately 20 petabytes of data per day – Facebook (Meta) stores over 100 petabytes of photos and videos – All US academic research libraries combined: approximately 2 PB – The human brain’s estimated storage capacity: roughly 2.5 PB – The NSA’s Utah Data Center was estimated to hold between 3 EB and 12 EB — meaning thousands of petabytes – One petabyte of music would take over 2,000 years to play continuously

The petabyte is the first unit most people encounter when reading about data centres, cloud services, and big data analytics.

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Exabyte (EB) — 1,000 Petabytes

An exabyte is 1,000 petabytes, or 10¹⁸ bytes. The entire global internet traffic crossed the 1 exabyte per month threshold in 2004. Today, that number is measured in hundreds of exabytes per month.

Real-world exabyte examples: – Global internet traffic in 2024: approximately 400–500 exabytes per month – All words ever spoken by human beings in history: estimated at 5 exabytes – Google’s total data storage across all products: estimated in the tens of exabytes – Amazon Web Services stores multiple exabytes of customer data

The exabyte is the active operating scale for major cloud providers and national data infrastructure today.

Zettabyte (ZB) — 1,000 Exabytes

A zettabyte is 1,000 exabytes, or 10²¹ bytes. The global datasphere — the total amount of digital data created, captured, copied, and consumed worldwide — crossed the 100 zettabyte mark in 2023 and continues growing rapidly.

Real-world zettabyte examples: – Global data created and consumed in 2025: estimated at 120–150 zettabytes – Global internet traffic in 2023 for the full year: approximately 5 zettabytes – A single zettabyte is equivalent to 250 billion DVDs

The zettabyte is the current unit used to describe global digital data at civilisation scale.

How Much Is A Petabyte? [Graphic]

What Comes After a Petabyte — The Full Sequence Explained

This is one of the most searched data storage questions. The full sequence:

Yottabyte (YB) — 1,000 Zettabytes

A yottabyte is 1,000 zettabytes, or 10²⁴ bytes. Until November 2022, the yottabyte was the largest officially named unit of data storage. It is so large that it has no current practical application — it represents more data than humanity has ever produced or stored.

Real-world yottabyte context: – Human activity is projected to generate approximately 1 yottabyte of data per year by around 2030 – A yottabyte of storage would require a data centre the size of the US states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined, according to storage vendor Backblaze – A stack of DVDs holding one yottabyte of data would stretch to Mars

What Comes After a Yottabyte? (Official Answer — Updated 2022)

This is one of the most searched data storage questions online — and it now has two official answers that most websites have not updated to reflect.

In November 2022, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) voted to officially adopt two new prefixes at the General Conference on Weights and Measures in Paris. These are:

Ronnabyte (RB) — 10²⁷ bytes

A ronnabyte is 1,000 yottabytes. The prefix “ronna” represents 10 to the power of 27. This is a purely theoretical scale for now — no organisation stores or processes ronnabytes of data. It was adopted in anticipation of future global data growth.

The Ronnabyte is the first of the two new officially recognised units beyond yottabyte.

Quettabyte (QB) — 10³⁰ bytes

A quettabyte is 1,000 ronnabytes, or 10 to the power of 30. The prefix “quetta” represents the largest officially adopted SI prefix. This is the current largest named data unit in the international standard.

For context: writing out a quettabyte in full would be a 1 followed by 30 zeroes: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.

Both the Ronnabyte and Quettabyte were officially adopted in November 2022, replacing informal terms like “hellabyte” (for 10²⁷) and “brontobyte” (for 10²⁷) that had been circulating in computing communities for years.

What Comes After Exabyte: A Guide to the Next Data Storage Units

Binary vs Decimal: The Confusion Explained

You may have noticed that Windows reports a 1 TB hard drive as 931 GB, or that a 128 GB phone seems to have less storage than advertised. This is the binary vs decimal difference.

Decimal (SI) system — used by hard drive manufacturers: – 1 KB = 1,000 bytes – 1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes – 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes – 1 TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes

Binary (IEC) system — used by operating systems: – 1 kibibyte (KiB) = 1,024 bytes – 1 mebibyte (MiB) = 1,048,576 bytes – 1 gibibyte (GiB) = 1,073,741,824 bytes – 1 tebibyte (TiB) = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes

A hard drive manufacturer labels their product “1 TB” using the decimal definition (1 trillion bytes). Your operating system reads the same drive using the binary definition and reports it as 931 GiB — but displays it as “931 GB.” This is not a lie or missing storage — it is the same data measured with different counting systems.

The IEC introduced binary-specific names in 1998 to solve this confusion: kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, tebibyte, pebibyte, exbibyte, zebibyte, yobibyte, robibyte, and quebibyte. In practice, most consumers and most software still use the old MB/GB/TB labels for both systems.

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Complete Reference: All Units with Binary Equivalents

Frequently Asked Questions

What comes after a petabyte? An exabyte. The sequence is: petabyte → exabyte → zettabyte → yottabyte → ronnabyte → quettabyte.

What comes after a yottabyte? A ronnabyte (10²⁷ bytes), followed by a quettabyte (10³⁰ bytes). Both units were officially adopted by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in November 2022.

What comes after a gigabyte? A terabyte (TB). The sequence from gigabyte: gigabyte → terabyte → petabyte → exabyte → zettabyte → yottabyte.

How big is a petabyte in gigabytes? One petabyte equals 1,000,000 gigabytes (one million GB). Or 1,000 terabytes.

How big is a terabyte? One terabyte equals 1,000 gigabytes or 1 trillion bytes. In practical terms: about 200,000 smartphone photos, 500 hours of HD video, or 1,000 full-length movies.

What is a zettabyte? A zettabyte is 1,000 exabytes, or 10²¹ bytes. The total amount of digital data created and consumed globally per year is now measured in zettabytes — approximately 120–150 ZB in 2025.

Is a megabyte or gigabyte bigger? A gigabyte is bigger. 1 GB = 1,000 MB. In order from small to large: kilobyte → megabyte → gigabyte → terabyte.

Why does my 1 TB hard drive show less than 1 TB? Hard drive manufacturers measure 1 TB as 1,000,000,000,000 bytes (decimal). Your operating system measures storage in binary units, where 1 TB = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes. The same physical storage appears smaller in the binary counting system. A 1 TB drive shows as approximately 931 GB in Windows.

What is the biggest unit of data storage? The quettabyte (QB), equal to 10³⁰ bytes, is the largest officially named data unit as of 2026. It was adopted by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in November 2022 alongside the ronnabyte.

Is a kilobyte 1,000 or 1,024 bytes? Both definitions exist. In the decimal (SI) system used by most storage manufacturers: 1 KB = 1,000 bytes. In the binary (IEC) system: 1 kibibyte (KiB) = 1,024 bytes. Consumer storage typically uses the decimal definition.

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Summary: The Full Answer to What Comes After a Petabyte

From smallest to largest — the complete sequence:

Bit → Byte → Kilobyte → Megabyte → Gigabyte → Terabyte → Petabyte → Exabyte → Zettabyte → Yottabyte → Ronnabyte → Quettabyte

Each unit is 1,000 times larger than the one before it in the decimal system. The Ronnabyte and Quettabyte are the newest additions — officially adopted in November 2022 and still entirely theoretical in terms of practical data storage.

The data units you encounter in everyday life span about 12 orders of magnitude: from kilobytes (emails and documents) to terabytes (hard drives and cloud storage) to petabytes (cloud providers and national infrastructure). Everything above that belongs to planetary-scale data and future projections.