Tap the Share icon in Safari’s toolbar, then choose “Add to Home Screen”. It’ll open straight to ID Number Check next time, like an app.
Every South African ID number encodes your date of birth, gender and citizenship status in a public, documented digit structure — type one above and this page decodes it instantly, entirely on your own device.
| Digits | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1–6 | Date of birth (YYMMDD) | 900101 → 1 Jan 1990 |
| 7–10 | Gender sequence — 0000–4999 female, 5000–9999 male | 5800 → male |
| 11 | Citizenship — 0 SA citizen, 1 permanent resident | 0 → citizen |
| 12 | Historically a race indicator; issued as 8 or 9 on all IDs since 1994 and no longer meaningful | 8 |
| 13 | Checksum digit (Luhn algorithm), used to catch typos | 8 |
No. The check runs entirely in your browser with JavaScript — the number you type never leaves your device, and SharpCheck has no server component to send it to even if it wanted to.
Either the number isn't 13 digits, or its final checksum digit doesn't match what the Luhn algorithm calculates from the first 12 — almost always a typo rather than anything more serious.
No — it only confirms the number is correctly formatted and decodes what it encodes. Confirming it belongs to a real person requires Home Affairs' own verification systems.
Before 1994 it indicated race. Post-apartheid IDs use a fixed value (8, and more recently 9) for every citizen, kept only for backward format compatibility.