Division (/)

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The division (/) operator produces the quotient of its operands where the left operand is the dividend and the right operand is the divisor.

Try it

console.log(12 / 2);
// Expected output: 6

console.log(3 / 2);
// Expected output: 1.5

console.log(6 / "3");
// Expected output: 2

console.log(2 / 0);
// Expected output: Infinity

Syntax

js
x / y

Description

The / operator is overloaded for two types of operands: number and BigInt. It first coerces both operands to numeric values and tests the types of them. It performs BigInt division if both operands become BigInts; otherwise, it performs number division. A TypeError is thrown if one operand becomes a BigInt but the other becomes a number.

For BigInt division, the result is the quotient of the two operands truncated towards zero, and the remainder is discarded. A RangeError is thrown if the divisor y is 0n. This is because number division by zero returns Infinity or -Infinity, but BigInt has no concept of infinity.

Examples

Division using numbers

js
1 / 2; // 0.5
Math.floor(3 / 2); // 1
1.0 / 2.0; // 0.5

2 / 0; // Infinity
2.0 / 0.0; // Infinity, because 0.0 === 0
2.0 / -0.0; // -Infinity

Other non-BigInt values are coerced to numbers:

js
5 / "2"; // 2.5
5 / "foo"; // NaN

Division using BigInts

js
1n / 2n; // 0n
5n / 3n; // 1n
-1n / 3n; // 0n
1n / -3n; // 0n

2n / 0n; // RangeError: BigInt division by zero

You cannot mix BigInt and number operands in division.

js
2n / 2; // TypeError: Cannot mix BigInt and other types, use explicit conversions
2 / 2n; // TypeError: Cannot mix BigInt and other types, use explicit conversions

To do division with a BigInt and a non-BigInt, convert either operand:

js
2n / BigInt(2); // 1n
Number(2n) / 2; // 1

Specifications

Specification
ECMAScript® 2025 Language Specification
# sec-multiplicative-operators

Browser compatibility

Report problems with this compatibility data on GitHub
desktopmobileserver
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
Deno
Node.js
Division (/)

Legend

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Full support
Full support

See also