What does each part of a South African ID mean?

The first six digits are the date of birth as YYMMDD. The next four encode sex: 0000 to 4999 is female and 5000 to 9999 is male. The eleventh digit is citizenship (0 citizen, 1 permanent resident). The twelfth is a historical race digit, now usually 8, and the thirteenth is the Luhn check digit.

How is the check digit calculated?

The thirteenth digit is a standard Luhn (mod-10) check over the first twelve digits. Doubling every second digit from the right, subtracting 9 from any result over 9, and summing must give a total whose units digit is zero.

What is the race digit?

The twelfth digit historically encoded a person's race under apartheid-era classification. It is obsolete and is now almost always 8 (or 9). The validator does not interpret it and it does not affect validity.

Does a valid ID mean the person exists?

No. A valid result only confirms the number is structurally correct and passes the Luhn check. It does not confirm the number was issued by Home Affairs to a real person. This tool performs no online lookup.

Is my ID number sent anywhere?

No. The whole validation runs in your browser using JavaScript. The ID number never leaves your device, which matters because it is sensitive personal data.

South Africa ID Number Validator

A South African ID number is a 13-digit identifier issued by the Department of Home Affairs that encodes a person’s date of birth, sex, and citizenship status, finished with a Luhn check digit. This free validator parses all of that and confirms the check digit in your browser.

How it works

The 13 digits break down as YYMMDD GGGG C R Z:

YYMMDD — date of birth. The day must be valid for the decoded month.
GGGG — gender sequence: 0000–4999 is female, 5000–9999 is male.
C — citizenship: 0 is a South African citizen, 1 is a permanent resident.
R — a historical race digit, now obsolete and usually 8. It is ignored.
Z — the Luhn check digit over the first twelve digits.

The Luhn check works from the right: double every second digit, subtract 9 from any doubled value above 9, sum all digits, and the total must be a multiple of 10.

Example

Take 8001015009087. The date 800101 decodes to 1 January 1980. The gender block 5009 is at or above 5000, so the person is male. The citizenship digit 0 marks a citizen. Running Luhn across all 13 digits gives a sum divisible by 10, so the check digit passes and the number is valid.

Notes

A valid result confirms the number is internally consistent and passes the Luhn check — it does not prove the number was issued to a real person. Because an ID number is sensitive personal data, all processing here is local and nothing is uploaded.