SHA384 Hash Generator

What is SHA-384?

SHA-384 produces 384 bits: 48 bytes, or 96 hexadecimal characters. It is part of the SHA-2 family in NIST FIPS 180-4.

Give it typed text or uploaded files. Each input returns its raw digest bytes and the lowercase hexadecimal form.

Why it is faster than it looks

SHA-384 is not a bigger SHA-256. It is built on SHA-512, using the same 64-bit words and 1024-bit blocks, with its own initialization values and the result cut to 384 bits.

That inheritance is the practical point. On 64-bit hardware the SHA-512 core processes data faster per byte than the 32-bit SHA-256 core, so asking for a longer digest here can genuinely cost less time than asking for a shorter one from SHA-256. If you are hashing large files on a modern machine, that is worth knowing.

Are there alternatives?

SHA512 gives the full 512-bit result from the same core, plus the SHA-512/224 and SHA-512/256 variants if you want a shorter output that keeps the 64-bit speed. SHA256 remains the more widely implemented option.

BLAKE2b and BLAKE3 are faster still. SHA-384 keeps its place mainly because standards and cipher suites specify it by name. For passwords, none of these apply and Argon2id Hash Generator does.

Fun facts and more info

The truncation is a security property, not just a size choice. Because the 384-bit output does not reveal the whole 512-bit internal state, SHA-384 resists the length-extension trick that works against full SHA-256 and SHA-512.

A SHA-384 digest is 96 hexadecimal characters, which tells it apart at a glance from SHA-256's 64 and SHA-512's 128. That is often the quickest way to work out which algorithm produced a value someone has handed you.