UUID Generator
Generate RFC 4122 compliant UUID v4 identifiers.
767ed2c2-12fa-429a-b46b-ba5dc0a3b9ac99108606-dcbd-4757-8aa6-290c8e03a70177853632-5bc3-4564-8ed6-83628c9f7e99907504a7-80cb-48cb-892c-96a3b742552fc5a5bec0-73fd-4b6a-b729-599796c9c8d3About This Tool
A UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) is a 128-bit label used to uniquely identify information. UUID v4 is randomly generated, making collisions practically impossible. It's the most common version used in software development.
When to Use
- Database primary keys when you need IDs generated client-side without a round-trip to the server.
- Correlation IDs for distributed system request tracing.
- Filenames for uploaded assets to avoid name collisions.
- Idempotency keys for payment APIs.
Practical Examples
v4 Format550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000 (8-4-4-4-12 hex character groups)
Version ByteThe 13th character is always '4' for UUID v4. The 17th is always '8', '9', 'a', or 'b'.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Using sequential integers as IDs in distributed systems — they create race conditions and ordering issues across nodes.
- Storing UUIDs as strings in a database instead of native UUID type (wastes 2× space).
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. How unique is UUID v4?A. The probability of generating a duplicate in 1 billion UUIDs per second for 100 years is about 50%. In practice, collisions are virtually impossible.
Q. Is UUID v4 secure?A. UUIDs are not cryptographically secure random numbers. Do not use them as auth tokens or session IDs — use crypto.getRandomValues or similar for security contexts.