Hash Generator
Paste text and get its MD5, SHA-1 and SHA-256 hashes at once, each with one-click copy — all computed in your browser.
How it works
Type or paste text
Anything from a single word to a full document.
Read all three hashes
MD5, SHA-1 and SHA-256 update together as you type, no separate steps.
Copy the one you need
Each digest has its own copy button, so you're never copying the wrong one.
What people use a hash generator for
A hash turns any text into a fixed-length fingerprint that's easy to compare.
Verifying download integrity
Comparing two files exactly
Learning how password hashing works
Detecting duplicate content
Checksums in data pipelines
A few things worth knowing
MD5, SHA-1 and SHA-256 are all "one-way" functions: easy to compute in one direction, effectively impossible to reverse. Feed the same text in twice and you always get the same output, but there's no way to go from the hash back to the original text — that's what makes hashes useful for verification rather than storage. Change even a single character of the input and the output changes completely and unpredictably, which is exactly what you want from a fingerprint used to detect any difference at all.
MD5 and SHA-1 are both cryptographically broken in the sense that researchers have demonstrated ways to construct two different inputs that hash to the same value — a "collision." That doesn't make them useless; they're still fine for quick integrity checks, deduplication, or matching against legacy systems that already use them. It does mean neither should be relied on anywhere security actually depends on collisions being infeasible, which is where SHA-256 comes in — it has no known practical collision attack and is the current standard for anything sensitive.
None of the three are appropriate for storing passwords, even SHA-256. Password hashing needs to be deliberately slow and salted per user (bcrypt, scrypt, Argon2) so that guessing passwords by brute force is expensive; general-purpose hash functions like these are built to be fast, which is the opposite of what you want when the input space (passwords people actually choose) is small and guessable.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between MD5, SHA-1 and SHA-256?
They're all hash functions that turn any input into a fixed-length fingerprint, but they differ in output size and how broken they are cryptographically. MD5 (128-bit) and SHA-1 (160-bit) are both considered cryptographically broken — researchers can craft two different inputs with the same hash — so neither should be trusted for security purposes anymore, though they're still common for quick integrity checks and legacy compatibility. SHA-256 (256-bit), part of the SHA-2 family, has no known practical collision attack and is the one to reach for when security actually matters.
Should I use this to hash passwords?
No. None of these three algorithms are designed for password storage — they're all fast to compute, which is exactly the wrong property for a password hash, since it makes brute-forcing feasible. Real password storage uses a slow, purpose-built algorithm like bcrypt, scrypt, or Argon2 with per-user salting. This tool is for generating checksums and identifiers, not for securing credentials.
Why does the same input always produce the same hash?
That's the defining property of a hash function — it's deterministic. The exact same text always produces the exact same digest, on any machine, any time. That's what makes hashes useful for verifying that two copies of something are identical without comparing them byte by byte: if the hashes match, the content matches.
Why is MD5 implemented in JavaScript instead of using the browser's built-in crypto?
The Web Crypto API (crypto.subtle.digest) doesn't support MD5 at all — browsers only expose SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512 through it, precisely because MD5 is considered obsolete for security use. SHA-1 and SHA-256 here use that native API; MD5 uses a small from-scratch implementation of the public RFC 1321 algorithm, verified against the RFC's own published test vectors.
Does a longer hash mean better security?
Output length is one factor, but algorithm design matters more. SHA-256 is both longer and structurally sounder than MD5 or SHA-1 — its length alone isn't the whole story, but combined with having no known practical break, it's why SHA-256 (or newer) is the standard choice today.
Is this hash generator free to use?
Yes, completely free, with no account, no sign-up, and everything computed locally in your browser.