Internet-Draft alt-uuid-encoding April 2026
Davis & Peabody Expires 4 October 2026 [Page]
Workgroup:
uuidrev
Internet-Draft:
draft-davis-uuidrev-alt-uuid-encoding-methods-00
Updates:
9562 (if approved)
Published:
Intended Status:
Standards Track
Expires:
Authors:
K. R. Davis
Cisco Systems
BGP. Peabody

Alternate UUID Encoding Methods

Abstract

This document presents considerations and best practices for alternate Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) encoding methods observed in the industry.

This document updates RFC9562 to provide suggested alternate encoding methods, best practices and the various implementation considerations required for choosing the correct encoding for an application.

When selected correctly, these alternate UUID encodings perform better on the wire, in a database, or within various other application logics versus the unnecessarily verbose text representation from RFC9562.

About This Document

This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.

The latest revision of this draft can be found at https://example.com/LATEST. Status information for this document may be found at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-davis-uuidrev-alt-uuid-encoding-methods/.

Discussion of this document takes place on the Revise Universally Unique Identifier Definitions (uuidrev) Working Group mailing list (mailto:uuidrev@ietf.org), which is archived at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/uuidrev/. Subscribe at https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/uuidrev/.

Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at https://github.com/uuid6/new-uuid-encoding-techniques-ietf-draft.

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

This Internet-Draft will expire on 4 October 2026.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

The original "hex-and-dash" (8-4-4-4-12) canonical format of UUIDs defined in [RFC9562] represents a 128-bit UUID value as a 288-bit text value. Although this format is useful for human readability, it is verbose for storage, transmission, and application parsing.

Because of this, developers have long used alternate UUID encodings. Many bespoke implementations—either within a single application or as one-off libraries—address shortcomings of the hex-and-dash form. However, most applications, databases, and standard libraries expose UUIDs exclusively using the formats described in IETF documents. If a feature is not specified by a well defined standard, implementers typically do not provide that feature and users do not see those capabilities. Consequently, although alternate encodings have been used and reimplemented for many years, there is no single applicable standard and implementations are inconsistent.

During the revision process that produced UUIDv6, UUIDv7, and UUIDv8 for [RFC9562], alternate encodings were a major topic of discussion. The level of interest showed that a separate document focused on alternate encodings was needed.

This document describes the most common alternate UUID encoding methods observed in the field and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each. The latter half of the document presents best practices and considerations implementations should weigh when selecting, implementing, or defining new alternate UUID encodings not covered in Alternate UUID Encoding Methods. These best practices are based on years of research, community feedback, and inspection of over 55 alternate-encoding implementations across 17 alphabets (see Example UUID Base Encoding Tools, Libraries, and resources).

2. Terminology

2.1. Conventions and Definitions

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

2.2. Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used in this document:

UUID

Universally Unique Identifier [RFC9562]

BaseXX

Base where XX references two numeric values with any leading 0 kept. For example Base02, Base10, Base16, Base32, Base64, etc.

3. Alternate UUID Encoding Methods

[RFC9562], Section 4 details that at its core, any given UUID is a 128 bit value which can be represented as Base02 (binary), Base10 (decimal/integer), Base16 (hex) and even a custom "hex-and-dash" string format; which is Base16 (hex) with a few extra dash characters added to create a unique UUID string format that is instantly recognizable. Further, the section goes on to discuss other string formats that often use the Hex and Dash format or Integer format.

While these are the "well-known" UUID formats, a UUID is fundamentally a 128-bit value and can be represented using many BaseXX alphabets.

The large number of possible BaseXX alphabets, together with the considerations described in Section 4, makes it impractical to cover every alphabet variant in a single document. Therefore, this document focuses on BaseXX alphabets that use US-ASCII ([RFC20]) and that are most commonly used in real-world implementations or were prototyped during the draft's preparation.

UUID library implementers SHOULD consider adding support for at least one alternate encoding described here and MAY support additional encodings, including ones not listed. If you implement a BaseXX alphabet not covered in the sections below, consult the considerations in UUID Encoding Best Practices.

For a quick comparison of alphabets, see Table 1.

Table 1: Alt UUID Encoding Alphabet Comparison
Encoding Variant Alphabet Order
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 0123456789ABCDEF with dash - characters added
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 0123456789ABCDEF
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ234567
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV
Base32 [Base32human] 0123456789ABCDEFGHJKMNPQRSTVWXYZ
Base36 --- 0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Base52 --- ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Base58 [Base58btc] 123456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz
Base62 [Base62ieee] ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789
Base62 [Base62sort] 0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789-_
Base64 [Base64sort] -0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ_abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Base85 [Z85] 0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.-:+=^!/*?&<>()[]{}@%$#

Note: All UUID examples in this document are alternate encodings of [RFC9562], Section 4's Example UUID starting from either Figure 2 (binary) or Figure 3 (integer). Each section has a few example encodings; any UUID featured in RFC9562 can be found in the Appendix C table converted to the corresponding BaseXX alphabet encoding.

3.1. Base32

Base32 alphabets generally use 5 bits per character, producing a 26-character output when encoding a 128-bit UUID; padding may be present. These alphabets include standards-based Base32 ([RFC4648], Section 6), Base32hex ([RFC4648], Section 7), Base32 for Humans [Base32human] (formerly known as Douglas Crockford's Base32), Z-Base-32 [ZB32], and [GEOHASH].

Base32 alphabets vary the most in character choice because implementers can be selective about which characters are included. Character Exclusions and alphabet ordering (see Sorting and Ordering) are important considerations and differ across implementations.

Base32 is often case-insensitive: lowercase letters are frequently treated the same as uppercase because the alphabet does not require distinct upper- and lower-case characters. Special Characters are rarely used with Base32, except for Padding Characters or Checksum Characters features, which can often be omitted.

Base32 is a strong choice when available. Base32hex ([RFC4648]) and Base32 for Humans ([Base32human]) are recommended options for a 26-character UUID that works well for both machines and humans. See Figure 1 and Figure 2 for examples.

Z-Base-32 human-oriented base-32 encoding makes many changes to the underlying alphabet to accommodate a specific use case and is not recommended for UUIDs. Although [GEOHASH] is closer to Base32hex and excludes some characters like the Base32 for Humans alphabet, its removal of trailing zeros is an unusual behavior not used by other BaseXX alphabets and may make adoption difficult.

There are many other Base32 variants; consult UUID Encoding Best Practices when selecting an alphabet not listed here.

V0EKVBJTTG8T19R502GCI7JBUO
Figure 1: Example UUID encoded as Base32 Hex

3.2. Base36

Base36 alphabets are similar to Base32 but use about 5.1699 bits per character, reducing a 128-bit UUID to 25 characters. Base36 typically uses digits 0–9 followed by uppercase A–Z, which affects case-sensitivity considerations (see Case Sensitivity). Alphabet ordering matters: using an alphabet ordered as A–Z0–9 would change sort order and is therefore uncommon.

Base36 also compresses leading null bytes (see Section 4.9) which may be desirable to further reduce the size of the encoded UUID.

Base36 is reasonably available (Section 4.10) but does not have concrete specifications outlined by a standards body.

See Figure 3 for an example.

EOSWZOLG3BSX0ZN8OTQ1P8OOM
Figure 3: Example UUID encoded as Base36

3.3. Base52

Base52 uses the 52 alphabetic characters A–Z and a–z, producing a 23-character UUID at about 5.700 bits per character.

Although not widely used, Base52 has useful properties: it contains no special characters (Special Characters) and excludes digits, avoiding issues with leading digits in some contexts. Its ordering can be chosen to preserve desirable sort behavior (see Sorting and Ordering).

Base52 also compresses leading null bytes (see Section 4.9) which may be desirable to further reduce the size of the encoded UUID.

Base52 does not have concrete specifications outlined by a standards body, but it is reasonably easy to implement.

See Figure 4 for an example.

FraqvVvqUBoEOFXsPYOPwUm
Figure 4: Example UUID encoded as Base52

3.4. Base58

Base58, used by [Base58btc] (and [Flickr]), is a popular alphabet and similar to Base32 for Humans in its character exclusions. Base58 encodes a 128-bit UUID into a 22-character string (about 5.857 bits per character). Base58 typically omits Padding Characters, and most implementations follow the same alphabet, with the [Base58xrp] variant being a notable exception.

Base58 also compresses leading null bytes (see Section 4.9) which may be desirable to further reduce the size of the encoded UUID.

Base58 Encoding Availability varies, but the format is well-known and commonly used for UUIDs in practice.

See Figure 5 for an example.

3.5. Base62

Base62 is the largest BaseXX alphabet that contains no special characters (Special Characters). Base62 encodes a 128-bit UUID as a 22-character string (about 5.954 bits per character). During research the authors observed a number of libraries or discussions specifically using Base62 for UUIDs.

[Base62ieee] (defined by the IEEE) is one implementation and [Base62sort] is a variant that preserves sort order. Both variants use the same set of 62 characters but in a different order: [Base62ieee] orders the alphabet as A–Za–z0–9 while [Base62sort] orders it as 0–9A–Za–z to preserve lexicographic sort order (see Table 1). Additionally, [Base62ieee] includes padding while [Base62sort] does not.

[Base62ieee] also compresses leading null bytes (see Section 4.9) which may be desirable to further reduce the size of the encoded UUID.

See Figure 6 for an example.

3.6. Base64

Base64 alphabets require special characters (Special Characters) to complete the 64-symbol set, so they typically do not use character exclusions. Base64 encodes a 128-bit UUID into a 22-character string (6 bits per character), similar in length to Base58 and Base62.

Because symbols are involved, many other permutations exist and this document cannot cover them all; see Usage when selecting an alphabet. The most common variants are the Base64 alphabet in [RFC4648], Section 4, Base64url in [RFC4648], Section 5 and Base64sort ([Base64sort]) (also known as Base64lex).

Base64 is recommended when maximum compactness is desired without Compressing Characters. For most use cases, Base64url ([RFC4648], Section 5) is encouraged because it is safe for URLs, filenames and Application Specific use cases. When lexicographical sorting that matches binary order is critical (for example, with UUIDv6 or UUIDv7), consider Base64sort ([Base64sort]).

Base64 alphabets enjoy widespread availability (Encoding Availability) and are far more common than Base32 as per an analysis of RFC4648 alphabet usage in the wild [RFC4648_Usage_Report].

See Figure 7 and Figure 8 for examples.

3.7. Base85

Base85 encodes 4 bytes as 5 characters (about 6.409 bits per character), so a 128-bit UUID can be represented in 20 characters. These alphabets include many special characters (Special Characters), and provide the most compact textual representation among the alphabets discussed. Common variants include Z85, [RFC1924] Base85, and ASCII85.

Some Base85 variants include compression techniques for certain byte sequences (see Compressing Characters). Those techniques are not universal across all Base85 alphabets.

Z85 is the recommended Base85 variant for UUIDs when Base85 is desired.

See Figure 10 for an example.

4. UUID Encoding Best Practices

There are several factors to consider when choosing an encoding for a UUID. Requirements that matter for one application may be irrelevant for another; the authors have grouped the most important considerations into best-practice categories in the sections that follow.

Each section focuses on UUID-specific concerns, but many of the topics generalize to selecting alternate encodings for other data.

4.1. Usage

Understanding how a UUID will be used is the most important step when choosing an alternate encoding. That analysis affects many of the considerations that follow.

For example, a UUID used as a logging prefix should be compact to reduce log size, while a UUID that must be read or spoken by humans should avoid characters that are easily confused. Shorter encodings with character exclusions are preferable when values are recited by phone or written by hand to reduce transcription errors.

Datastores (see [RFC9562]) care about case sensitivity, alphabet ordering, and encoded length because these factors affect sorting, storage, and performance at scale. UUIDs transmitted between machines benefit from extremely compact encodings to reduce bytes on the wire and improve behavior on limited-MTU or high-latency networks.

For resource-constrained devices such as IoT endpoints, prefer encodings that are computationally inexpensive to encode and decode.

The general statement by the authors is as follows: there is no single correct choice to cover every scenario.

4.2. Maximum Character Length

The number of characters/symbols in a given encoding alphabet is directly correlated to the size of the alternate UUID encoding output.

As a starting point the encodings defined by RFC9562 are Binary, Integer, and Hex. Base02 (Binary) version of a UUID is 128 characters in length consisting of 0s and 1s. The Base10 (decimal/integer) version of a UUID is 39 characters consisting of characters 0 through 9 while the Base16 (Hex) version of a UUID shortens this to 32 characters by using characters 0 through 9 and A through F.

Base32 libraries tend to produce a UUID output of 26 characters in length and base64 drops the output UUID to 22 characters.

With this trend one may be tempted to simply pick the highest BaseXX encoding available and get the smallest encoding output possible however as the output encoding decreases, the base alphabet increases. At a specific point both numeric values, upper and lowercase values may be present and any number of unique symbols can be present in the base alphabet. The addition and ordering of these can have rippling effects that one must properly consider. Further, some of these alphabets require unique math to properly apply to the fixed-length 128 bit UUID which may increase computational complexity in unfavorable ways along with padding to output a similarly fixed-length value.

Simply picking the biggest base alphabet to get the smallest encoding only works if the only consideration an implementation cares about is the actual size of the output UUID.

To glean the maximum size of a given BaseXX encoding with a 128-bit UUID, convert the binary form of UUID MAX from [RFC9562], Section 5.10.

Table 2 details the maximum length of various BaseXX Encoding methods with UUID MAX, without padding present.

Table 2: Alt UUID Encoding Length Comparison
Encoding Variant Maximum Character Length
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 36
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 32
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 26
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 26
Base32 [Base32human] 26
Base36 --- 25
Base52 --- 23
Base58 [Base58btc] 22
Base62 [Base62ieee] 22
Base62 [Base62sort] 22
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 22
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 22
Base64 [Base64sort] 22
Base85 [Z85] 20

4.3. Padding Characters

Padding characters go hand in hand with the previous section involving the maximum character length of an output alternate UUID encoding.

The most common padding character is the equal sign (=) however it could theoretically be any character possible. It is recommended to use the equal sign since it is the most well-known padding character among the various BaseXX encodings.

Further, this character is almost always in the least significant, right-most section of a given alternate UUID encoding. The padding SHOULD stay in this position and moving the character can have ramifications for sorting.

For example, Base64sort ([Base64sort]) allows for either the equal sign (=) or tilde (~) as a padding character, but only the tilde is valid for sorting because the equal sign is lexicographically less than all other characters in the alphabet.

Since UUIDs defined by [RFC9562] are always 128 bits, padding MAY be omitted and the resulting output will always be the same length.

Table 3 compares padding usage among the BaseXX encoding methods in this document.

Table 3: Alt UUID Encoding Padding Comparison
Encoding Variant Padding
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 N
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 N
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 Y (=)
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 Y (=)
Base32 [Base32human] N
Base36 --- N
Base52 --- N
Base58 [Base58btc] N
Base62 [Base62ieee] Y
Base62 [Base62sort] N
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 Y (=)
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 Y (=)
Base64 [Base64sort] Y (= or ~)
Base85 [Z85] N

4.4. Checksum Characters

Some newer BaseXX encodings include checksum characters that are used to ensure the input/output encoding and decoding is working as expected.

The actual character and algorithm used vary among BaseXX implementations.

Including checksums increases both the maximum size of the output encoding and the computation requirements for encoding/decoding alternate UUID formats.

For alternate UUIDs transmitted among two machines it may be beneficial to include a checksum character to validate the given UUID has not been modified during transport before using it for various operations thus increasing the resiliency of the alternate UUID generation and parsing process.

For applications that simply care about generating UUIDs but do not need to parse, checksums MAY be omitted entirely.

Table 4 compares checksum usage among the BaseXX encoding methods in this document.

Table 4: Alt UUID Encoding Checksum Comparison
Encoding Variant Checksums
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 N
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 N
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 N
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 N
Base32 [Base32human] Y (*,~,$,=,U,u)
Base36 --- N
Base52 --- N
Base58 [Base58btc] Y (SHA256-based)
Base62 [Base62ieee] N
Base62 [Base62sort] N
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 N
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 N
Base64 [Base64sort] N
Base85 [Z85] N

4.5. Special Characters

After all of the alpha-numeric characters are used a BaseXX alphabet must resort to using special characters such as but not limited to underscore (_), hyphen (-), plus (+), forward slash (/), dollar sign ($), etc. This usually occurs around 62 characters (ten digits 0-9, 26 lowercase English characters, 26 uppercase English characters) but may happen with earlier BaseXX alphabets when specific characters are excluded.

The inclusion of these characters decrease the overall size of the encoded UUID but have implications in regards to not just sorting and readability but often application usage. For example Base64 as defined by [RFC4648] has two alphabets which change the special characters to ensure safe usage with URLs and Filenames.

Another example is the ability to double-click a UUID and copy the value. When special characters are present the text highlight starts and stops between these characters. In such a scenario, if this is important one should implement a BaseXX Alphabet with no such characters.

When evaluating a baseXX encoding, care must be taken to ensure the special characters are compatible with the desired use case.

Table 5 compares special character inclusions among the BaseXX encoding methods in this document.

Table 5: Alt UUID Encoding Special Character Comparison
Encoding Variant Special Characters
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 Y (dash)
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 N
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 N
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 N
Base32 [Base32human] N
Base36 --- N
Base52 --- N
Base58 [Base58btc] N
Base62 [Base62ieee] N
Base62 [Base62sort] N
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 Y (plus, forward-slash)
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 Y (dash, underscore)
Base64 [Base64sort] Y (dash, underscore)
Base85 [Z85] Y (numerous, see Table 1)

4.6. Character Exclusions

Newer BaseXX alphabets may exclude characters, retaining only one character from each group of visually similar characters.

This often occurs when multiple characters are similar in shape, which may lead to issues when humans are required to read the characters aloud or manually transpose the characters by hand. Some characters may be excluded for other non-obvious reasons like avoiding potential vulgar words or other application-specific issues.

For example it may be advantageous to remove 0 as a possible option to eliminate the possibility of leading 0s in the output data which may lead to problems in specific use cases where leading 0s are not permitted or may be inadvertently removed by the application.

Finally, in some smaller BaseXX alphabets it is possible to exclude characters because they are not required to fill out the space. The notable example is Base32hex defined by [RFC4648], Section 7 which only uses A through V because the remaining slots are filled by numeric 0-9.

The following character groupings illustrate some of the problematic characters that are similarly shaped.

- 0, O, o
- 1, I, i, L, l
- 2, Z, z
- 5, S, s
- V, v, U, u

Unfortunately there is no consistent method for which character is omitted or removed. Some BaseXX alphabets may remove the numeric characters while others may remove one or both of the English characters, often replacing them with symbols in larger BaseXX alphabets to fill the gaps.

Implementations should vet BaseXX alphabets with character exclusions thoroughly to ensure any possible inclusion of symbols does not cause problems while also verifying that sorting is not impacted if sorting is a requirement.

Table 6 compares character exclusions among the BaseXX encoding methods in this document.

Table 6: Alt UUID Encoding Character Exclusion Comparison
Encoding Variant Character Exclusions
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 N
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 N
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 N
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 N
Base32 [Base32human] Y (Ii,Ll,Oo,Uu)
Base36 --- N
Base52 --- N
Base58 [Base58btc] Y (0,I,O,l)
Base62 [Base62ieee] N
Base62 [Base62sort] N
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 N
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 N
Base64 [Base64sort] N
Base85 [Z85] N

4.7. Case Sensitivity

Case sensitivity becomes important when the alphabet includes more than 32 characters. For alphabets at or below Base32 (for example, Base16), uppercase and lowercase characters are often treated interchangeably; for larger alphabets, uppercase and lowercase letters represent distinct values.

In most scenarios, uppercase letters are ordered before lowercase letters. This ordering directly impacts sorting because many applications sort uppercase characters before lowercase characters. Sorting is further covered in Sorting and Ordering.

The BaseXX alphabet used also changes comparison logic: "aBc" does not necessarily equal "AbC" in all encodings.

Table 7 compares case sensitivity among the BaseXX encoding methods in this document.

Table 7: Alt UUID Encoding Case Sensitivity Comparison
Encoding Variant Case Sensitive
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 N
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 N
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 N
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 N
Base32 [Base32human] N
Base36 --- N
Base52 --- Y
Base58 [Base58btc] Y
Base62 [Base62ieee] Y
Base62 [Base62sort] Y
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 Y
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 Y
Base64 [Base64sort] Y
Base85 [Z85] Y

4.8. Sorting and Ordering

Lexicographical sorting of UUIDs is a very important factor to many applications and the ordering of the BaseXX alphabet directly impacts the sorting of the encoded UUID output such as those created by UUIDv6 and UUIDv7 where lexicographically sortable UUIDs are a key feature of the underlying algorithm.

The BaseXX alphabets generally consist of two or more of the following 4 components with optional omissions as defined by Section 4.6:

1. Numeric Characters: 0-9
2. Uppercase Character: A-Z
3. Lowercase Characters: a-z
4. Symbols: underscore (_), hyphen (-), plus (+), forward slash (/), dollar sign ($), etc.

The ordering of these is traditionally Numeric, Uppercase, Lowercase and Symbols. However for ordering purposes, some symbols may be placed at a different position to adhere to their position found in US-ASCII ([RFC20]).

A common sorting example is a symbol like the dash (-) character may sort before numbers while other special characters such as an underscore (_) will be sorted after the uppercase characters but before the lowercase characters if sorted via their ASCII values.

If an implementation would like to ensure the sort order of the encoded value remains the same as the Base02 (binary) or Base10 (decimal) value one should scrutinize the position of the underlying BaseXX alphabets, their ordering and the included symbols.

Figure 11 illustrate the ordering trends for some common BaseXX Alphabets that adhere to the US-ASCII character set and their ordering of the various components.

- Base10:      0123456789
- Base32hex:   0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV
- Base36:      0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
- Base62sort:  0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
- Base64sort: -0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ_abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Figure 11: Alphabet Ordering Comparison

Table 8 compares binary sorting among the BaseXX encoding methods in this document.

Table 8: Alt UUID Encoding Sorting Comparison
Encoding Variant Sorts the Same as Binary
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 Y
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 Y
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 N
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 Y
Base32 [Base32human] Y
Base36 --- Y
Base52 --- Y
Base58 [Base58btc] Y
Base62 [Base62ieee] N
Base62 [Base62sort] Y
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 N
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 N
Base64 [Base64sort] Y
Base85 [Z85] N

4.9. Compressing Characters

Some BaseXX alphabets may use varying techniques for compressing null bytes (0x00), whitespace, or long runs of the continuous characters which can sometimes yield values smaller than what is cited in Section 4.2.

Base36, Base52, Base58, and A secure, lossless, and compressed Base62 encoding will trim leading zero characters before attempting to encode the data.

Base85 alphabets may employ a technique to compress a continuous four byte sequence of ASCII Space characters as the character lowercase y.

Base85 alphabets may also compress a continuous four byte sequence of ASCII Zero characters as the character lowercase z.

The leading zero compression technique can be observed in Appendix C.2 using NIL UUID input to illustrate the output featuring a much smaller value than the outputs found in other test vectors.

This variability may be desirable to produce even smaller UUIDs however this could also prove a problem if an application expects a UUID of a specific fixed-length value found in Section 4.2.

4.10. Encoding Availability

The BaseXX alphabet encoding availability may be the second greatest hurdle implementations navigate as they chose a viable alternate encoding for UUID.

For example, traditional Base64url safe sees far more standard implementations than Base32hex as per [RFC4648_Usage_Report] while even fewer have implemented Base62 or Base36 variants.

The ability to utilize a given encoding or provide a customized alphabet may be a limiting factor in implementations. In this scenario implementors will need to write their own, leverage third-party libraries or select a viable alternative.

This is being addressed in some ways by standardizing documents such as [Base32human] or [Base64sort] but there are still many BaseXX alphabets that do not have concrete specifications outlined by a standards body. Further, it takes time for a languages and applications to implement and adopt these standards and for the standards to be widely adopted by the community.

4.11. Computation

The various base encodings have more or less computational requirements based on the size of the alphabet, the total number of bits encoded per character, if checksums are involved, and if floating point math is required (e.g radix-xx computations).

For reference, Base02 uses 1 bit per character, Base10 uses about 3.322 bits per character, Base16 uses 4 bits per character, Base32 uses 5 bits, and Base64 uses 6 bits. While non–power-of-two alphabets like Base36, Base58, or Base62 use approximately 5.169, 5.857, and 5.954 bits per character respectively, the computation is log2(XX) where XX is the alphabet length.

Table 9 compares bits per character among the BaseXX encoding methods in this document.

Table 9: Alt UUID Encoding Bits Comparison
Encoding Variant Bits per Character
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 4.000
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 4.000
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 5.000
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 5.000
Base32 [Base32human] 5.000
Base36 --- 5.169
Base52 --- 5.700
Base58 [Base58btc] 5.857
Base62 [Base62ieee] 5.954
Base62 [Base62sort] 5.954
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 6.000
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 6.000
Base64 [Base64sort] 6.000
Base85 [Z85] 6.409

4.12. Application Specific

Some applications have very specific restrictions which may influence the alternate UUID encoding selection. This section features a limited list compiling some known restrictions that implementations may consider while working with alternate UUID encodings.

4.12.1. URI, URL, URN

Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) have a specific list of reserved characters defined by [RFC3986], Section 2.2 which require percent encoding to be used.

It is advisable to avoid BaseXX alphabets that include these symbols.

4.12.2. DNS Record

Domain Name Systems (DNS) are case insensitive with the period or dot character (.) being a reserved symbol. [RFC9499], Section 2

Thus BaseXX alphabets that utilize this character or use upper and lowercase values as defined by Case Sensitivity should be avoided.

4.12.3. XML, HTML, CSS

Extensible Markup Language ([XML]) namespaces cannot start with a leading numeric character.

While older versions of Hypertext Markup Language ([HTML]) had restrictions on element identifiers starting with a leading digit, HTML5 does not have any such restrictions. The same goes for Cascading Style Sheet ([CSS]) selectors identifiers where older versions would have issues when identifiers start with digits.

Thus for XML, HTML, and CSS it is advantageous to use some advanced methods such as:

  • Leveraging the alternate UUID encoding technique defined via [NCNAME] (UUID-NCName-32, UUID-NCName-58 or UUID-NCName-64) to ensure that the first digit is always an uppercase alphabet character.

  • An alternative algorithm to the NCNAME method is to prefix a value like b0100 or b10 as seen in [Base62id] or [Base64uuid] to ensure the first character is always a letter.

  • Utilize Section 3.3 which ensures the output UUID does not start with a special character or digit.

  • Simply prefix the first non-digit/non-special character in the given alphabet. For example, if uppercase A is available, prefix this character to satisfy the constraints.

4.12.4. Database Keys

Databases often have specific requirements for keys such as case sensitivity, sorting, and maximum length.

When using alternate UUID encodings as database keys, it is important to consider these requirements and select an encoding that meets them.

Database implementors should consider [Base62id] or [Base64uuid] when using alternate UUID encodings as database keys to ensure the first character is an uppercase alphabet character and the output is compact.

Base62id is preferred over Base64uuid due to the lack of special characters in the alphabet which can cause issues with sorting and other database operations.

It should also be noted that Base64uuid differs from Base64sort in that the hyphen character (-) in the first position of the alphabet is replaced with a dollar sign ($) as seen in Figure 12.

Base64sort: -0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ_abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Base64uuid: $0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ_abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Figure 12: Comparison of Base64sort and Base64uuid Alphabets

5. Parsing

This document focuses on generating UUIDs via alternate formats rather than parsing UUIDs of alternate encoding formats. The generic default for any existing uuid_parse(uuid) function SHOULD remain that of [RFC9562], Section 4 hex-and-dash string format.

Implementors MAY provide parse functionality to parse UUIDs of alternate formats such as uuid_parse(uuid, encoding="base64url"). The distribution (and naming) of the encoding algorithm among disparate systems is outside of the scope of this document.

In practice this is seldom an issue because most implementations that need to parse UUIDs are aware of the encoding format used by their peers. For example, the sender and receiver of a Base64url-encoded UUID are often within the same application boundary. It is uncommon for two different systems to exchange UUIDs in a way that requires the receiver to parse an alternate-format UUID back into binary; typically the receiver treats the received UUID as an opaque string.

6. Recommendations

Table 10 below provides an at-a-glance set of recommendations for each BaseXX alphabet described in this document for new implementations looking to introduce alternate encodings with UUID.

While some rows state "Not Recommended", if a library is currently providing this alternate encoding; they may continue to do so without deprecating, removing or otherwise undoing existing functionality.

Table 10: General Guidance for Alternate UUID Encoding Recommendations
Encoding Variant Recommendation
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 Not Recommended with UUID. Leverage Base32hex or Base32 for Humans.
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 Recommended when sorting is required.
Base32 [Base32human] Recommended when sorting and human usage is required.
Base36 --- Not Recommended with UUID. Leverage Base32hex or Base32 for Humans.
Base52 --- Recommended when sorting is required, special characters/digits pose problems, and variable-length UUIDs are not a problem.
Base58 [Base58btc] Recommended when sorting and human usage is required, and variable-length UUIDs are not a problem.
Base62 [Base62ieee] Recommended when variable-length UUIDs are not a problem.
Base62 [Base62sort] Recommended when sorting is required and special characters/digits pose problems.
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 Not Recommended with UUID. Leverage Base64url or Base64sort.
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 Recommended for most use cases.
Base64 [Base64sort] Recommended when sorting is required.
Base85 [Z85] Recommended when symbols are not a concern.

7. Security Considerations

Section Checksum Characters addresses the primary security-related concern in this document: data-integrity validation for UUIDs transmitted over the wire.

No additional security considerations are identified.

8. IANA Considerations

This document has no IANA actions.

9. References

9.1. Normative References

[RFC2119]
Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.
[RFC4648]
Josefsson, S., "The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data Encodings", RFC 4648, DOI 10.17487/RFC4648, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4648>.
[RFC8174]
Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.
[RFC9562]
Davis, K., Peabody, B., and P. Leach, "Universally Unique IDentifiers (UUIDs)", RFC 9562, DOI 10.17487/RFC9562, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9562>.

9.2. Informative References

[Base32human]
Crockford, D. and K. Davis, "Base32 for Humans", , <https://github.com/douglascrockford/Base32>.
[Base58btc]
Bitcoin, "Bitcoin Base58 Implementation", commit fae71d3, , <https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/base58.cpp>.
[Base58xrp]
XRP Ledger, "base58 Encodings", , <https://xrpl.org/docs/references/protocol/data-types/base58-encodings>.
[Base62id]
Prokhorenko, S., "Base62id Encoding Specification for Binary UUIDs", , <https://github.com/sergeyprokhorenko/Base62id/>.
[Base62ieee]
IEEE, "A secure, lossless, and compressed Base62 encoding", , <https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4737287>.
[Base62sort]
Wu, P.-C., "A base62 transformation format of ISO 10646 for multilingual identifiers", , <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/spe.408>.
[Base64sort]
Davis, K., "A Sortable Base64 Alphabet", , <https://github.com/kyzer-davis/base64-sort-ietf-draft>.
[Base64uuid]
Prokhorenko, S., "The Base64UUID Encoding and Choice of Encoding for UUID", , <https://github.com/sergeyprokhorenko/Base64UUID>.
[CSS]
W3C, "Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1 (CSS 2.1) Specification", , <https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/syndata.html#value-def-identifier>.
[Flickr]
Kellen, "manufacturing flic.kr style photo URLs", n.d., <https://www.flickr.com/groups/api/discuss/72157616713786392/>.
[GEOHASH]
Geohash, "Geohash", commit 3f0ce0b, , <https://github.com/vinsci/geohash/blob/master/Geohash/geohash.py>.
[HTML]
whatwg, "HTML Living Standard", , <https://html.spec.whatwg.org/>.
[NCNAME]
Taylor, D., "Compact UUIDs for Constrained Grammars", , <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-taylor-uuid-ncname/>.
[RFC1924]
Elz, R., "A Compact Representation of IPv6 Addresses", RFC 1924, DOI 10.17487/RFC1924, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1924>.
[RFC20]
Cerf, V., "ASCII format for network interchange", STD 80, RFC 20, DOI 10.17487/RFC0020, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc20>.
[RFC3986]
Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986>.
[RFC4648_Usage_Report]
"RFC4648 Alphabet Usage Report", commit de0a2760, , <https://gitlab.com/julian.reschke/base-encodings-terminology/-/blob/main/classifcation.md?ref_type=heads>.
[RFC9499]
Hoffman, P. and K. Fujiwara, "DNS Terminology", BCP 219, RFC 9499, DOI 10.17487/RFC9499, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9499>.
[XML]
W3C, "Namespaces in XML 1.0 (Third Edition)", , <https://www.w3.org/TR/2009/REC-xml-names-20091208/>.
[Z85]
iMatix Corporation, "32/Z85", , <https://rfc.zeromq.org/spec/32/>.
[ZB32]
O'Whielacronx, Z., "human-oriented base-32 encoding", , <https://philzimmermann.com/docs/human-oriented-base-32-encoding.txt>.

Appendix A. Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of

As well as all of those in the IETF community and on GitHub who contributed to the discussions which resulted in this document.

Appendix B. Changelog

draft-00:

Appendix C. Test Vectors

The test vectors in the upcoming sections map the UUIDs found in RFC9562 Sections to their appropriate BaseXX Alphabet Encoding without padding.

All of the BaseXX Alphabets described in this document and others not described can be viewed at the online tool the Authors are using for prototyping and comparison: https://uuidformattester.yuli.dev/ (Source Code: https://github.com/daegalus/uuid-format-tester)

The NCNAME test vectors (UUID-NCName-32, UUID-NCName-58, and UUID-NCName-64) are direct copies from the appendix of [NCNAME].

Each section also includes test vectors for [Base62id] and [Base64uuid] which are not included in the main body of the document but are included here for reference.

C.1. Generic UUID

Table 11: UUID Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section 4
Encoding Variant RFC9562, Section 4
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 f81d4fae-7dec-11d0-a765-00a0c91e6bf6
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 f81d4fae7dec11d0a76500a0c91e6bf6
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 7AOU7LT55QI5BJ3FACQMSHTL6Y
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 V0EKVBJTTG8T19R502GCI7JBUO
Base32 [Base32human] Z0EMZBKXXG8X19V502GCJ7KBYR
Base36 --- EOSWZOLG3BSX0ZN8OTQ1P8OOM
Base52 --- FraqvVvqUBoEOFXsPYOPwUm
Base58 [Base58btc] Xe22UfxT3rxcKJEAfL5373
Base62 [Base62ieee] HiLegqjbBwUc0Q8tJ3ffs6
Base62 [Base62sort] 7YBUWgZR1mKSqGyj9tVViw
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 +B1Prn3sEdCnZQCgyR5r9g
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 -B1Prn3sEdCnZQCgyR5r9g
Base64 [Base64sort] y0pEfbrg3S1bOF1VmGtfxV
Base85 [Z85] {-iekEE4M)R!2>3:Stl>
Table 12: UUID-NCName, Base62id, Base64uuid Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section 4
Encoding Output
UUID-NCName-32 b7aou7lt55qoqoziauder427wk
UUID-NCName-58 B7wc88dU4e3NyJEj3e944DK
UUID-NCName-64 B-B1Prn3sHQdlAKDJHmv2K
[Base62id] N8JYxDHbz7rx9rGIw80uxC
[Base64uuid] Is6JyiUTkGo9S_$9286ajq

C.2. NIL UUID

Table 13: UUID Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section 5.9: Nil UUID
Encoding Variant RFC9562, Section 5.9
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 00000000000000000000000000000000
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 00000000000000000000000000
Base32 [Base32human] 00000000000000000000000000
Base36 --- 0
Base52 --- A
Base58 [Base58btc] 1
Base62 [Base62ieee] 0
Base62 [Base62sort] 0
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Base64 [Base64sort] ----------------------
Base85 [Z85] 00000000000000000000
Table 14: UUID-NCName, Base62id, Base64uuid Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section 5.9: Nil UUID
Encoding Output
UUID-NCName-32 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
UUID-NCName-58 A111111111111111______A
UUID-NCName-64 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
[Base62id] Fa84QWiAxLXUJaHZmEVPEG
[Base64uuid] F$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

C.3. MAX UUID

Table 15: UUID Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section 5.10: MAX UUID
Encoding Variant RFC9562, Section 5.10
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 77777777777777777777777774
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVS
Base32 [Base32human] ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZW
Base36 --- p777777777777777777777777p
Base52 --- GBIWTpZqojFGQPQPXtvbJAv
Base58 [Base58btc] P8AQGAut7N92awznwCnjuQP
Base62 [Base62ieee] HxECNQWFdpvuJxIw3HPrmH
Base62 [Base62sort] 7n42DGM5Tflk9n8mt7Fhc7
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 /////////////////////w
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 _____________________w
Base64 [Base64sort] zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzk
Base85 [Z85] s8W-!s8W-!s8W-!s8W-!
Table 16: UUID-NCName, Base62id, Base64uuid Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section 5.10: MAX UUID
Encoding Output
UUID-NCName-32 p777777777777777777777777p
UUID-NCName-58 P8AQGAut7N92awznwCnjuQP
UUID-NCName-64 P____________________P
[Base62id] NNC6dn4GR1JETNQMfLl6qN
[Base64uuid] Izzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

C.4. UUIDv1

Table 17: UUID Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section A.1: UUIDv1
Encoding Variant RFC9562, Section A.1
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 C232AB00-9414-11EC-B3C8-9F6BDECED846
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 C232AB00941411ECB3C89F6BDECED846
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 YIZKWAEUCQI6ZM6IT5V55TWYIY
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 O8PAM04K2G8UPCU8JTLTTJMO8O
Base32 [Base32human] R8SAP04M2G8YSCY8KXNXXKPR8R
Base36 --- BHW3F9QSZLQPYH8GTZ35HZ4UE
Base52 --- EddHArfCMSZGGUJvWdXrHHq
Base58 [Base58btc] Qys2KsgsAKw9ZKupo76FCh
Base62 [Base62ieee] F4bpVC8trxK13yapr3UFrY
Base62 [Base62sort] 5uRfL2yjhnArtoQfhtK5hO
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 wjKrAJQUEeyzyJ9r3s7YRg
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 wjKrAJQUEeyzyJ9r3s7YRg
Base64 [Base64sort] kY9f-8FJ3Tmnm8xfrgvNGV
Base85 [Z85] .znd(LOs.@V=F+O?P<+y
Table 18: UUID-NCName, Base62id, Base64uuid Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section A.1: UUIDv1
Encoding Output
UUID-NCName-32 byizkwaeucqpmhse7nppm5wcgl
UUID-NCName-58 B6S7oX73gv2Y1iTENdXX8hL
UUID-NCName-64 BwjKrAJQUHsPIn2vezthGL
[Base62id] LUZjlZguf8iMDOiFU7pUve
[Base64uuid] I1Beg$_0FGvAE7bqjTnhW5

C.5. UUIDv2

Table 19: UUID Test Vectors for DCE Security: UUIDv2
Encoding Variant DCE Security UUID
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 000003e8-cbb9-21ea-b201-00045a86c8a1
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 000003e8cbb921eab20100045a86c8a1
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 AAAAH2GLXEQ6VMQBAACFVBWIUE
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 00007Q6BN4GULCG10025L1M8K4
Base32 [Base32human] 00007T6BQ4GYNCG10025N1P8M4
Base36 --- 5XJERAFS5KNNNG5WAM10H
Base52 --- KNcIMemTgumAjqCSfqp
Base58 [Base58btc] 2SMnXSegyRgxWPnMoHS
Base62 [Base62ieee] azPmOJmh9xNaNgM2sh
Base62 [Base62sort] azPmOJmh9xNaNgM2sh
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 AAAD6Mu5IeqyAQAEWobIoQ
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 AAAD6Mu5IeqyAQAEWobIoQ
Base64 [Base64sort] ---2uBit7Tem-F-3LcQ7cF
Base85 [Z85] 000b++EF!YVh<}dt87a(
Table 20: UUID-NCName, Base62id, Base64uuid Test Vectors for DCE Security: UUIDv2
Encoding Output
UUID-NCName-32 caaaah2glxepkeaiaarninsfbl
UUID-NCName-58 C11KtP6Y9P3rRkvh2N1e__L
UUID-NCName-64 CAAAD6Mu5HqIBAARahsihL
[Base62id] Fa84rLxnBVA2JNUzzkiHwn
[Base64uuid] F$$$EcmvZWuf70$$GPWgXW

C.6. UUIDv3

Table 21: UUID Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section A.2: UUIDv3
Encoding Variant RFC9562, Section A.2
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 5df41881-3aed-3515-88a7-2f4a814cf09e
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 5df418813aed351588a72f4a814cf09e
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 LX2BRAJ25U2RLCFHF5FICTHQTY
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 BNQ1H09QTKQHB2575T582J7GJO
Base32 [Base32human] BQT1H09TXMTHB2575X582K7GKR
Base36 --- 5K8PHACEYCDEGBDB1VWP0EAHQ
Base52 --- CKwZBXIbBzTOnGTcpOSLRtq
Base58 [Base58btc] CbuPE286MB6RsDazcU7sUy
Base62 [Base62ieee] C1Rz9EB7xwwtaBE3hssbl8
Base62 [Base62sort] 2rHpz41xnmmjQ14tXiiRby
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 XfQYgTrtNRWIpy9KgUzwng
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 XfQYgTrtNRWIpy9KgUzwng
Base64 [Base64sort] MUFNVIfhCGL7dmx9VJnkbV
Base85 [Z85] ?1\tb3ped>Lo2muJP>R)
Table 22: UUID-NCName, Base62id, Base64uuid Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section A.2: UUIDv3
Encoding Output
UUID-NCName-32 dlx2braj25vivrjzpjkauz4e6i
UUID-NCName-58 D3dTNMAmevR4NFAakRDtLdI
UUID-NCName-64 DXfQYgTrtUVinL0qBTPCeI
[Base62id] IRPuPak8l8KDjbMTJxDqqE
[Base64uuid] GSx0X0Diop4NXbAoe0IE1T

C.7. UUIDv4

Table 23: UUID Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section A.3: UUIDv4
Encoding Variant RFC9562, Section A.3
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 919108f7-52d1-4320-9bac-f847db4148a8
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 919108f752d143209bacf847db4148a8
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 SGIQR52S2FBSBG5M7BD5WQKIVA
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 I68GHTQIQ51I16TCV13TMGA8L0
Base32 [Base32human] J68GHXTJT51J16XCZ13XPGA8N0
Base36 --- 8M8SCPFUGFIJ4QENJ0IG77QG8
Base52 --- DWDhSoKPZRoqkgBWaJcOckY
Base58 [Base58btc] JyZVoFVQxQNmw2bsgr7D1R
Base62 [Base62ieee] EaqKcHGnV4iQSYo57bXn6o
Base62 [Base62sort] 2rHpz41xnmmjQ14tXiiRby
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 kZEI91LRQyCbrPhH20FIqA
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 kZEI91LRQyCbrPhH20FIqA
Base64 [Base64sort] ZO37xpAGFm1QfEW6qo47e-
Base85 [Z85] K=Y}zqQE&OO2(xP*D!xe
Table 24: UUID-NCName, Base62id, Base64uuid Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section A.3: UUIDv4
Encoding Output
UUID-NCName-32 esgiqr52s2ezaxlhyi7nucsfij
UUID-NCName-58 E55CtqYNqva1mcmaa877eoJ
UUID-NCName-64 EkZEI91LRMgus-EfbQUioJ
[Base62id] K0oEsdooJG5kbywVjft3Au
[Base64uuid] HGZFYrJh4278igy3UQFJXc

C.8. UUIDv5

Table 25: UUID Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section A.4: UUIDv5
Encoding Variant RFC9562, Section A.4
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 2ed6657d-e927-568b-95e1-2665a8aea6a2
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 2ed6657de927568b95e12665a8aea6a2
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 F3LGK7PJE5LIXFPBEZS2RLVGUI
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 5RB6AVF94TB8N5F14PIQHBL6K8
Base32 [Base32human] 5VB6AZF94XB8Q5F14SJTHBN6M8
Base36 --- 2RTO2O5WTBFMSYWZX7KHQ1Z8I
Base52 --- BFPTsrUJhwfXFHQeVflYshu
Base58 [Base58btc] 6nTLogGvw2vmQjtATLqvLq
Base62 [Base62ieee] BaXm0PEMkU5w7EKQaysNQO
Base62 [Base62sort] 1QNcqF4CaKvmx4AGQoiDGE
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 LtZlfeknVouV4SZlqK6mog
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 LtZlfeknVouV4SZlqK6mog
Base64 [Base64sort] AhO_UTZbKciKsHO_e9uacV
Base85 [Z85] f4KPZ>{GI&MeK63Sii1(
Table 26: UUID-NCName, Base62id, Base64uuid Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section A.4: UUIDv5
Encoding Output
UUID-NCName-32 ff3lgk7pje5ullyjgmwuk5jvcj
UUID-NCName-58 F2K15VFLUBD326h169SNPjJ
UUID-NCName-64 FLtZlfeknaLXhJmWorqaiJ
[Base62id] H0VhGlmNXgTHGeRqD3DcUU
[Base64uuid] FipaKxuHSLXtMW8aLcfePX

C.9. UUIDv6

Table 27: UUID Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section A.5: UUIDv6
Encoding Variant RFC9562, Section A.5
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 1EC9414C-232A-6B00-B3C8-9F6BDECED846
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 1EC9414C232A6B00B3C89F6BDECED846
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 D3EUCTBDFJVQBM6IT5V55TWYIY
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 3R4K2J1359LG1CU8JTLTTJMO8O
Base32 [Base32human] 3V4M2K1359NG1CY8KXNXXKPR8R
Base36 --- 1TM3WVVTP7XVNZXA2TV43IJWM
Base52 --- liRiaXmgJTfBQppyCovyGu
Base58 [Base58btc] 4oVbpzb8BpnTH1mg11dmWd
Base62 [Base62ieee] 6FuGgfRpa7N6YbrlxT6FQ
Base62 [Base62sort] w5k6WVHfQxDwORhbnJw5G
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 HslBTCMqawCzyJ9r3s7YRg
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 HslBTCMqawCzyJ9r3s7YRg
Base64 [Base64sort] 6g_0I1BePk1nm8xfrgvNGV
Base85 [Z85] 9)3YwbpWEeV=F+O?P<+y
Table 28: UUID-NCName, Base62id, Base64uuid Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section A.5: UUIDv6
Encoding Output
UUID-NCName-32 gd3euctbdfkyahse7nppm5wcgl
UUID-NCName-58 GrxRCnDiX4mxSq8bFQjT3_L
UUID-NCName-64 GHslBTCMqsAPIn2vezthGL
[Base62id] GWDoX3DScmUiFyjHO1pLJW
[Base64uuid] FTmJ4B7mdf$AE7bqjTnhW5

C.10. UUIDv7

Table 29: UUID Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section A.6: UUIDv7
Encoding Variant RFC9562, Section A.6
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 017F22E2-79B0-7CC3-98C4-DC0C0C07398F
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 017F22E279B07CC398C4DC0C0C07398F
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 AF7SFYTZWB6MHGGE3QGAYBZZR4
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 05VI5OJPM1UC7664RG60O1PPHS
Base32 [Base32human] 05ZJ5RKSP1YC7664VG60R1SSHW
Base36 --- 36TWI214QWJ7MGSVQ83NM8WF
Base52 --- BrKaFlCsyjaiCYuzuWvtun
Base58 [Base58btc] BihbxwwQ4NZZpKRH9JDCz
Base62 [Base62ieee] CzFyajyRd5A9oiF8QCBUD
Base62 [Base62sort] 2p5oQZoHTv0zeY5yG21K3
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 AX8i4nmwfMOYxNwMDAc5jw
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 AX8i4nmwfMOYxNwMDAc5jw
Base64 [Base64sort] -MwXsbakUBDNlCkB2-RtYk
Base85 [Z85] 0E(rMD9zXlN8E+*3<O!N
Table 30: UUID-NCName, Base62id, Base64uuid Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section A.6: UUIDv7
Encoding Output
UUID-NCName-32 haf7sfytzwdgdrrg4bqgaoompj
UUID-NCName-58 H3RrXaX7uTM6qdwrXwpC6_J
UUID-NCName-64 HAX8i4nmwzDjE3AwMBzmPJ
[Base62id] FcxAExHzEpSVJEpfkUXQYJ
[Base64uuid] F0UmAXTQ0wktY3r$kB0naE

C.11. UUIDv8

Table 31: UUID Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section B.1: UUIDv8
Encoding Variant RFC9562, Section B.1
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 2489E9AD-2EE2-8E00-8EC9-32D5F69181C0
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 2489E9AD2EE28E008EC932D5F69181C0
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 ESE6TLJO4KHABDWJGLK7NEMBYA
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 4I4UJB9ESA7013M96BAVD4C1O0
Base32 [Base32human] 4J4YKB9EWA7013P96BAZD4C1R0
Base36 --- 25VHD0YEN79F79OO0TV0BAE9S
Base52 --- skNtHBdXlnQCRPhYqjxSkQ
Base58 [Base58btc] 5WhDz2zW6g9mHu7EP9hoVq
Base62 [Base62ieee] BG6ufXDWs4d4Dd5uoJIAi0
Base62 [Base62sort] 16wkVN3MiuTu3Tvke980Yq
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 JInprS7ijgCOyTLV9pGBwA
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 JInprS7ijgCOyTLV9pGBwA
Base64 [Base64sort] 87bdfHvXYV1DmIAKxd50k-
Base85 [Z85] b-g=/f5?(>J(:6b{k%{w
Table 32: UUID-NCName, Base62id, Base64uuid Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section B.1: UUIDv8
Encoding Output
UUID-NCName-32 iese6tljo4lqa5sjs2x3jdaoai
UUID-NCName-58 I22HpMAy5M181AjPFG7eLXI
UUID-NCName-64 IJInprS7i4A7JMtX2kYHAI
[Base62id] Gh4ovtlXgG1ON4DKQNdPn6
[Base64uuid] FZXTahAi9D$7v8BhMqZN6$
Table 33: UUID Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section B.2: UUIDv8
Encoding Variant RFC9562, Section B.2
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 5c146b14-3c52-8afd-938a-375d0df1fbf6
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 5c146b143c528afd938a375d0df1fbf6
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 LQKGWFB4KKFP3E4KG5OQ34P36Y
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 BGA6M51SAA5FR4SA6TEGRSFRUO
Base32 [Base32human] BGA6P51WAA5FV4WA6XEGVWFVYR
Base36 --- 5G8XXKU1AQGT02ZJGR8PA3EUU
Base52 --- CIhPGFswaUyeIiUVKFQScIW
Base58 [Base58btc] CNV2iY4mKiTS1uw8RxapEH
Base62 [Base62ieee] CxumvfWqhqp4Kq4BkCGR1s
Base62 [Base62sort] 2nkclVMgXgfuAgu1a26Hri
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 XBRrFDxSiv2TijddDfH79g
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 XBRrFDxSiv2TijddDfH79g
Base64 [Base64sort] M0Gf42lHXjqIXYSS2U6vxV
Base85 [Z85] tOH@/jw}7nLzRq84E%t?
Table 34: UUID-NCName, Base62id, Base64uuid Test Vectors for RFC9562, Section B.2: UUIDv8
Encoding Output
UUID-NCName-32 ilqkgwfb4kkx5hcrxlug7d67wj
UUID-NCName-58 I3aR2J7aw1BJj4jJvfuWTXJ
UUID-NCName-64 IXBRrFDxSr9OKN10N8fv2J
[Base62id] INshC24rV2DOUHBbMGbh5y
[Base64uuid] GR45gJE499zOD9CpoCwUjq

C.12. Microsoft UUID

The following UUID 00000013-0000-0000-c000-000000000000 is for Microsoft.Azure.Portal and ensures this specification also includes non IETF/DCE variants of UUIDs.

Table 35: UUID Test Vectors for Microsoft.Azure.Portal
Encoding Variant Microsoft.Azure.Portal
Base16 [RFC9562], Section 4 00000013-0000-0000-c000-000000000000
Base16 [RFC4648], Section 8 0000001300000000C000000000000000
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 6 AAAAAEYAAAAABQAAAAAAAAAAAA
Base32 [RFC4648], Section 7 000004O000001G000000000000
Base32 [Base32human] 000004R000001G000000000000
Base36 --- 41Y09GGWTDKLN13WMO74
Base52 --- KGlWYrtEyPFBiZpPts
Base58 [Base58btc] 2anhPihXPV7NXZKLC7
Base62 [Base62ieee] fjupi4ia0Gz3Pwu9y
Base62 [Base62sort] VZkfYuYQq6ptFmkzo
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 4 AAAAEwAAAADAAAAAAAAAAA
Base64 [RFC4648], Section 5 AAAAEwAAAADAAAAAAAAAAA
Base64 [Base64sort] ----3k----2-----------
Base85 [Z85] 0000j00000ZYjum00000
Table 36: UUID-NCName, Base62id, Base64uuid Test Vectors for Microsoft.Azure.Portal
Encoding Output
UUID-NCName-32 aaaaaaeyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam
UUID-NCName-58 A111Mo9hVUdmNWqcCExF__M
UUID-NCName-64 AAAAAEwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM
[Base62id] Fa84R2HvcuS2kQOPfUIAE4
[Base64uuid] F$$$$I$$$$$B$$$$$$$$$$

Appendix D. Example UUID Base Encoding Tools, Libraries, and resources

The following list of libraries, tools, code, packages and other resources is for illustrative and research purposes.

Neither the authors or IETF endorse any of these libraries or guarantee their contents safe and harmless.

Install, download or use this software at your own risk.

D.1. Base32, Base

- https://github.com/chilts/sid
- https://www.jsdelivr.com/package/npm/uuid-encoder
- https://github.com/jetify-com/typeid
- https://docs.crunchybridge.com/api-concepts/eid
- https://hackage.haskell.org/package/ron-0.12/docs/RON-UUID.html
- https://help.sap.com/doc/abapdocu_751_index_htm/7.51/en-US/abencl_system_uuid.htm

D.2. Base32, Hex

- https://github.com/rs/xid

D.3. Base32, Crockford

- https://github.com/ulid/spec
- https://codeberg.org/prettyid/python
- https://ptrchm.com/posts/based-uuid/
- https://github.com/martinheidegger/uuid-b32
- https://docs.rs/fast32/latest/fast32/
- https://uuid.ramsey.dev/en/stable/rfc4122/version7.html
- https://crates.io/crates/crockford-uuid
- https://rymc.io/blog/2024/uuidv7-typeids-in-diesel/
- https://docs.rs/rusty_ulid/latest/rusty_ulid/

D.4. Base32, NCNAME

- https://www.rubydoc.info/gems/uuid-ncname

D.5. Base36

- https://github.com/paralleldrive/cuid2
- https://www.jsdelivr.com/package/npm/uuid-encoder
- https://duncan99.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/converting-uuid-to-base36/
- https://github.com/salieri/uuid-encoder
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62059588/shortening-a-guid
- https://gist.github.com/fabiolimace/508dd2dd9d32fd493b31a5f386d5d4bc
- https://classic.yarnpkg.com/en/package/base36-uuid

D.6. Base58

- https://github.com/cbschuld/uuid-base58
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/advantages-using-base58-unique-identifier-databases-lucian-ivanov
- https://github.com/AlexanderMatveev/go-uuid-base58
- https://packagist.org/packages/cbschuld/php-uuid-base58
- https://classic.yarnpkg.com/en/package/uuid58
- https://blog.schochastics.net/posts/2024-08-24_short-uuids/
- https://www.jsdelivr.com/package/npm/uuid-encoder

D.7. Base62

- https://github.com/boundary/flake
- https://github.com/segmentio/ksuid
- https://www.jsdelivr.com/package/npm/uuid-encoder
- https://grokipedia.com/page/Base62
- https://repost.aws/questions/QUPyiPyPsTTz6bnss1nQLoiQ/is-qldb-document-id-a-globally-unique-uuid
- https://hexdocs.pm/base62_uuid/readme.html
- https://github.com/lucasmichot/uuid62

D.8. Base64

- https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/blob/main/server/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/common/UUIDs.java#L23
- https://github.com/chilts/sid
- https://github.com/twitter-archive/snowflake
- https://github.com/ppearcy/elasticflake/blob/master/src/main/java/org/limberware/elasticflake/Base64.java
- https://www.mongodb.com/docs/manual/reference/method/ObjectId.createFromBase64/
- https://firebase.blog/posts/2015/02/the-2120-ways-to-ensure-unique_68
- https://www.jsdelivr.com/package/npm/uuid-encoder
- https://base64-uuid.com/
- https://rcfed.com/Utilities/Base64GUID
- https://toolslick.com/conversion/data/guid
- https://guidgenerator.com/
- https://help.sap.com/doc/abapdocu_751_index_htm/7.51/en-US/abencl_system_uuid.htm

D.9. Base85

- https://stackoverflow.com/a/772984
- http://codehardblog.azurewebsites.net/encoding-uuid-based-keys-to-save-memory/
- https://gist.github.com/Higgs1/fee62d230bd87257e0b0
- https://www.npmjs.com/package/pure-uuid
- https://cjhaas.com/2013/11/12/php-base85-encode-128-bit-integer-guiduuid/
- https://webpowered.tools/textcodec/

Authors' Addresses

Kyzer R. Davis
Cisco Systems
Brad G. Peabody