MD5 vs SHA-256: What's the Difference?

MD5 and SHA-256 are two of the most well-known hash functions. They look similar but differ in one critical way: security.

The headline difference

• MD5 is broken. Researchers can deliberately create two different inputs with the same MD5 hash (a collision). Never use it for security.
• SHA-256 is secure. No practical collisions are known. It's the modern standard.

Side by side

	MD5	SHA-256
Output size	128 bits (32 hex chars)	256 bits (64 hex chars)
Speed	Faster	Slower
Collision resistance	Broken	Strong
Safe for security?	No	Yes

So is MD5 useless?

Not entirely. For non-security purposes it's still fine and fast:

• Detecting accidental file corruption
• Cache keys and checksums where an attacker isn't involved
• Quick deduplication

The moment security matters — passwords, signatures, integrity against a malicious actor — MD5 is disqualified. See why you should never use MD5 for passwords.

What to use

• General integrity / non-adversarial → MD5 or SHA-256, your choice.
• Anything security-related → SHA-256 (or SHA-3, or for passwords specifically, bcrypt/argon2).

Try it

Compare the MD5 and SHA-256 hashes of the same text with the hash generator.