Skip to content

Free tools

UUID generator and decoder

Generate random v4 or time-ordered v7 UUIDs, one at a time or ten thousand at once, or decode a UUID you already have to see its version and embedded time.

Generate UUIDs

Decode a UUID

Paste any UUID to check it and see its version, variant and, for v1, v6 and v7, the time inside it.

Try an example:

UUID v4 or v7?

v4v7
Contents122 random bits48-bit Unix time in milliseconds, then 74 bits of counter and randomness
Reveals when it was madeNoYes, to the millisecond, to anyone who decodes it
Sort orderRandomRoughly by creation time
Good forIdentifiers that must not leak timingDatabase keys, where new rows land at the end of the index

Both are defined by RFC 9562, which replaced RFC 4122 in 2024. If the identifier is a database key, v7 is usually the better default; if it is exposed and its age is nobody's business, use v4.

How ordered is v7?

Within one batch from this tool, every value is greater than the one before it. The generator keeps the sub-millisecond part of the clock in the 12 bits after the version, and never hands out a value lower than its last one, even if the server's clock steps back; in that case the embedded time runs slightly ahead of the real time until the clock catches up. That guarantee holds within one generator process only. Separate requests can be served by different processes, and UUIDs made on different machines are only as ordered as their clocks, so treat v7 as sorting roughly by creation time rather than as a strict sequence.

What decoding can and cannot tell you

The decoder reads the bits: the variant, the version and, for the time-based versions 1, 6 and 7, the embedded timestamp, shown in UTC. A v4 UUID has no time in it, and a name-based v3 or v5 UUID is a hash, so no creation time is shown for them. The nil UUID (all zeros) and the max UUID (all ones) are special values with no version. A UUID that parses is only well formed: it does not prove who made it, when it was really made or that it is unique, and a v7 timestamp is whatever the generator's clock said. UUIDs are identifiers, not secrets; do not use one as a password, session token or API key.

How these UUIDs are made

Values are generated by our Go API with the google/uuid library, from the operating system's cryptographic random source. They are returned to you and forgotten: not logged, stored or added to analytics, and the same is true of a UUID you decode.

More free tools