What is the better alternative to UUID?

UUIDs are great—but they’re not perfect.

They’re long, not human-friendly, and their randomness (especially in UUIDv4) doesn’t play well with databases that rely on sorted inserts. So what are the better alternatives to UUIDs?

Let’s walk through three strong contenders: ULID, KSUID, and NanoID.

🔹 1. ULID – Universally Unique Lexicographically Sortable Identifier

ULIDs aim to solve the problems UUIDs struggle with:

• Sortable: They start with a timestamp
• Readable: Base32 encoding is friendly for humans
• Uniqueness: Uses 80 bits of randomness after the time component

Example:

🔧 Use Cases:

• Database IDs that need to be ordered by creation time
• Systems where readability matters
• Distributed systems needing collision resistance

Pros:

• Sortable (unlike UUIDv4)
• URL-safe and compact
• Widely implemented across languages

Cons:

• Slightly longer than UUIDs
• Time component can reveal creation time (use cautiously for privacy)

🔹 2. KSUID – K-Sortable Unique Identifier

KSUIDs were built by Segment to be like UUIDv1, but better.

• 128 bits long (like UUID)
• First 32 bits are a timestamp (seconds since epoch)
• Remaining 96 bits are random

Example:

🛠️ Use Cases:

• Event logging
• Systems that need time-based ordering
• Anywhere UUIDv1 was used—but with improved safety

Pros:

• Encodes time, helpful for logs and analytics
• Sorts chronologically
• No MAC address leaks like UUIDv1

Cons:

• Larger than NanoID or shortened UUIDs
• Not as readable as ULID

🔹 3. NanoID – The Customizable ID Generator

NanoID is small, secure, and incredibly flexible:

• Default size is 21 characters
• Customizable alphabet and length
• Collision-resistant even with shorter strings

Example:

⚙️ Use Cases:

• Client-side generation
• Short URLs
• Secure IDs in front-end apps

Pros:

• Tiny footprint (~130 bytes in JS)
• URL-safe and compact
• Cryptographically secure

Cons:

• Not inherently sortable
• No embedded timestamp or metadata

📊 Feature Comparison

🤔 Which One Should You Use?

• Want ordering + readability? Go ULID.
• Need database-friendly IDs with timestamp? Try KSUID.
• Need tiny, flexible, front-end-safe IDs? Use NanoID.
• Still using UUIDv4? It’s fine, but not optimal for sorted data or readability.

✅ Final Thoughts

UUIDs served us well—but modern systems need better ergonomics, sorting, and performance. Thankfully, tools like ULID, KSUID, and NanoID offer strong, practical alternatives.

Choose your ID wisely—it’s more than a string; it’s the foundation of how your system works, scales, and communicates.

Next up: a benchmark showdown of UUID vs ULID vs NanoID in Python, Node.js, and Go. Don’t miss it!