Hashing a password correctly matters — get it wrong and your users' accounts are at risk. I7 Pixel's free bcrypt generator hashes and verifies passwords using the same algorithm trusted by countless production systems, entirely inside your browser. Adjust the cost factor, see the timing for each hash, verify any password against an existing hash, and keep a local history — without ever sending a single character to a server.
$2a$ / $2b$ hashes compatible with PHP, Node.js, Python, and most backend frameworks.Hashing or verifying a password with bcrypt takes just a few clicks. Here's the full workflow.
Bcrypt has been a cornerstone of secure password storage for over two decades. Here's what it is, how it works, and why it's still recommended today.
Bcrypt is a password-hashing function based on the Blowfish cipher, designed specifically to be slow and resistant to brute-force attacks. Every bcrypt hash has the form $2b$10$saltsaltsaltsaltsaltsahashhashhashhashhashhashhashha — it embeds the algorithm version, the cost factor, a random 16-byte salt, and the resulting hash all in one string. Because the salt is unique per hash, two identical passwords will produce two completely different hashes, which prevents attackers from using precomputed rainbow tables.
The cost factor (also called "rounds") determines how many times the underlying key-setup algorithm runs — specifically, 2cost iterations. A cost of 10 means 210 = 1,024 iterations; a cost of 12 means 4,096 iterations. Each +1 to the cost factor roughly doubles the time needed to compute a single hash. This is intentional: it makes hashing slightly slower for legitimate logins, but makes brute-forcing millions of password guesses prohibitively slow for attackers. I7 Pixel's tool shows the exact timing for your chosen cost factor so you can tune it for your hardware.
Algorithms like MD5 and SHA-256 are fast by design — great for checksums, terrible for passwords. A modern GPU can compute billions of SHA-256 hashes per second, making brute-force attacks on leaked hash databases trivial. Bcrypt deliberately trades speed for security: its built-in salt eliminates rainbow-table attacks, and its tunable cost factor lets it stay computationally expensive even as hardware improves. This is why bcrypt (and its successors Argon2 and scrypt) remain the recommended choices for storing user passwords, while MD5 and plain SHA-256 are considered unsuitable.
From backend developers to security students, this free tool is useful anywhere bcrypt hashes need to be generated, inspected, or tested.
Answers to the most common questions about bcrypt and how to use this generator.
Bcrypt is a password-hashing algorithm based on the Blowfish cipher. It automatically generates a random salt for every hash and runs a configurable number of iterations (the cost factor), so even identical passwords produce different, slow-to-crack hashes like $2b$10$....
A cost factor of 10–12 is recommended for most web applications in 2026. Each +1 roughly doubles the hashing time. Try a few values in this tool and watch the timing display to find what feels right for your hardware and login volume.
Switch to the Verify panel, paste the full bcrypt hash (e.g. $2b$10$...) and the plaintext password to test, then click Verify. The salt and cost factor are extracted automatically from the hash, and the tool reports a match or no match instantly.
Yes — bcrypt with a cost factor of 10 or higher is still considered secure and is widely used in production. Newer algorithms like Argon2 are recommended for brand-new systems, but bcrypt remains a solid, well-audited choice.
No — never. Hashing and verification run entirely in your browser using a local JavaScript bcrypt library. Nothing is transmitted, logged, or stored. You can disconnect from the internet after the page loads and the tool keeps working.
SHA-256 and MD5 are fast general-purpose hashes — great for checksums, bad for passwords, since attackers can try billions of guesses per second. Bcrypt is deliberately slow and includes a built-in salt and tunable cost factor, making large-scale cracking far more expensive.
This is by design. Bcrypt generates a new random salt every time you hash, which is embedded in the output string. Different salts produce different hashes for the same input — that's exactly what defeats rainbow-table attacks. Use the Verify panel, not string comparison, to check a password.
Bcrypt only processes the first 72 bytes of input — anything beyond that is silently ignored. For almost all real-world passwords this is irrelevant, but very long passphrases should be hashed with SHA-256 first if you need to use every character.
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