ID Safety Tool

UUID Collision Calculator

Compare collision odds for UUIDs, GUIDs, ULIDs, Nanoids, and custom ID formats.

1,000,000,000 samples

Random UUID with 122 unpredictable bits.

Collision probability
9.40e-20
Negligible
Odds
1 in 1.06e+19
Entropy
122.0 bits
1-in-billion at
1.03e+14
Format
Entropy
Probability
UUID v4
Total IDs generated
122 bits
9.40e-20
GUID
Total IDs generated
122 bits
9.40e-20
UUID v7
IDs in one millisecond
74 bits
0.00265%
ULID
IDs in one millisecond
80 bits
4.14e-7
Nanoid
Total IDs generated
126 bits
5.88e-21

How UUID collision probability works

Collision risk follows the birthday problem: the chance rises with the square of the number of generated IDs and falls with the size of the ID space. A UUID v4 has 122 random bits, so its available random space is huge even at very large generation volumes.

Why UUID v7 and ULID use a millisecond count

Time-ordered IDs split the identifier into a timestamp and a random section. Collision risk is concentrated inside a single timestamp bucket, so the relevant input is the peak number of IDs generated in the same millisecond.

When custom IDs need extra care

Short custom IDs can be useful for public URLs and human-facing codes, but each removed character reduces the ID space. The calculator makes that tradeoff visible before the format becomes part of an API or database schema.