In this paper we present an efficient bitloading algorithm that applies to both subband coding and multicarrier communication. The goal is to effect an optimal distribution of positive integer bit values among various subchannels to achieve a minimum distortion error variance for subband coding and transmitted power for multicarrier communications. Existing algorithms in the literature grow with the total number of bits that must be distributed. The novelty of our algorithm lies in the fact that its complexity is independent of the total number of bits to be allocated