Security and privacy decision
Check ID
A single developer can build and run a secure structural SA ID validator and API in about a week; the product's durable value is mainly convenience, trust, and billing which are reproducible and not moat-level.
Visit website↗Built by Pieter van Wyk, who ships 10 products in this index
$99/mo
$1,188/yr
Read off the official pricing page.
$50one-off20 h to build
$20/mo3 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.
No open-source build does this yet
Nothing published replaces this one, so a replacement starts from an empty file. Here is what it would have to cover.
What a replacement has to do
- Accept an ID number, run structural checks (format, DOB encoding, citizenship byte, Luhn checksum), return decoded fields and validity via a REST API and web single-check UI.
What it still won’t have
- Brand reputation, existing user base (4,600+ monthly users and 815k historical validations)
- Polished SLA and sub-second response guarantees described on the site
- Built-in billing/plan management and team features (Professional/Business plans)
- Documentation, tutorials and ready-made integration snippets
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal SA ID structural validation service using Node.js (Express) and Postgres for usage counters, deployed on a single DigitalOcean droplet or equivalent. Core features in scope: (1) implement SA ID parsing and structural checks (date decoding, citizenship indicator, Luhn checksum) as a library; (2) REST API with bearer-token auth and endpoints GET /api/v1/validate/{id} and POST /api/v1/validate/bulk returning JSON with decoded fields and boolean valid; (3) single-page web UI for manual checks and a CSV bulk-upload page that returns a downloadable CSV of results; (4) lightweight billing/plan flagging to enforce a 1,000-calls/month quota and request counting (do not persist ID numbers); (5) TLS, basic rate-limiting, error handling, input validation, and unit tests for validation logic and API. Out of scope: Home Affairs or government lookups, biometric document scanning, and training ML models. Include automated tests, CI for deployments, and simple health and metrics endpoints.How we checked
How the score was reached
- Build verdict base78
- 3 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score88
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 3
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productCheck ID home
- official pricingPricing
- official docsSecurity Features of SA Smart ID Cards
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
