MD5 Hash Generator

How to get an MD5 hash

1. Type or paste text, or switch to File and pick the file to check.
2. The MD5 hash appears at the top as 32 hexadecimal characters.
3. Copy it, or paste the MD5 you were given into the compare box to confirm they match.

Where you still meet MD5

MD5 was published in 1992 and became the standard checksum of its era. It's still everywhere, even though newer algorithms have replaced it for security. You'll find MD5 values next to downloads on older software sites and mirrors, in backup and file-sync tools that use it to detect changed files, in digital-asset and archive workflows that record a checksum for each stored file, in database columns used as quick fingerprints for deduplication, and in plenty of APIs and legacy systems that expect an MD5 of a payload. If someone hands you an MD5 to check against, this page gives you the matching value without installing anything.

What an MD5 hash looks like

An MD5 digest is 128 bits, written as 32 hexadecimal characters (0–9 and a–f). Two well-known reference values let you confirm any MD5 tool is working correctly:

Type abc into the box above and you'll get exactly that second value. If you have a hash that is 40, 64 or 128 characters long, it isn't MD5; it's SHA-1, SHA-256 or SHA-512, which are shown on this page as well.

Checking a file against a published MD5

1. Switch to File and choose the downloaded file.
2. Wait for the progress bar. Large files are read in 4 MB pieces, so even multi-gigabyte files can be checked without loading them into memory at once.
3. Paste the published checksum into Compare with a hash. A green message means the file is byte-for-byte what the publisher hashed; a red one means it's different, most often because the download was interrupted.

The file is read inside your browser and never uploaded, which matters when you're checking private backups or client deliverables.

Why MD5 isn't a security tool

In 2004 researchers showed how to create two different inputs with the same MD5 hash, and the attacks have become much cheaper since then. That means MD5 can't prove a file wasn't deliberately tampered with: an attacker who controls the file could craft a malicious one with a matching hash. It also shouldn't be used to store passwords, where a slow, salted algorithm like Argon2, scrypt or bcrypt is needed.

For catching accidental damage, such as a truncated download, a bad USB stick or a copy error, MD5 still does the job, because random corruption producing the same hash is practically impossible. When you're publishing checksums yourself or need protection against tampering, use SHA-256 instead; the SHA-256 Hash Generator page explains how. Everything here also works for plain text, so you can generate MD5 values for test data, cache keys or API signatures while developing.

More ways to use this tool