A reference is only as good as its willingness to say where it got things and how sure it is. This page is that statement.
Primary sources
The administrative backbone of the register — provinces, divisions, districts, tehsils, and the structure of the number itself — is derived from the following, which are published under CC BY-SA 4.0:
| Source | Used for |
|---|---|
| CNIC (Pakistan)Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0 | The structure of the thirteen-digit number, the 5-7-1 grouping, the meaning of the final check digit, and the province digit assignments 1–7. |
| Administrative units of PakistanWikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0 | Province and division names, and the province → division → district → tehsil hierarchy the coding scheme mirrors. |
| Districts of PakistanWikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0 | District names, the division each belongs to, tehsil lists, and the dates districts were created, split or merged. |
Portions of the administrative data in this register are adapted from the Wikipedia articles listed above, by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.
Changes were made. The material has been restructured into a coded register, mapped onto CNIC prefixes, abridged, cross-checked against other sources, and annotated with provenance marks. It is not a verbatim copy.
Accordingly, the register data on this site — the province, division, district, tehsil and code compilation — is made available under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. If you reuse it, credit this site and Wikipedia, link the licence, and share your adaptation alike. The site’s written guides, design and source code are separate works and are not covered by that grant.
Cross-checking
The primary sources establish the administrative map. They do not establish the prefix mapping, because no published source does. Those come from:
- Public administrative lists. Provincial and district administration listings, used to cross-check district and tehsil names and to catch reorganisations Wikipedia had not yet reflected.
- Community-compiled code lists. Long-circulating prefix lists maintained by the public. These are the only available source for most division and district digits, and are the reason the majority of entries are marked as derived rather than documented.
- Published worked examples. Individual prefixes that appear consistently across independent public records. These become the register's documented anchor codes.
How accurate is any given entry?
Every code carries one of two marks, and the difference is real rather than decorative:
- Documented anchor (●) — 12 of 135 district codes. The mapping appears consistently across independent public records. Treat it as solid.
- Derived (○) — 123 of 135. The mapping follows the standard coding scheme and community lists, with no published source confirming it directly. Treat it as a strong indication, not a fact.
Layer by layer, the confidence is roughly:
| Digit | Layer | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Province | Definitive. Officially documented, runs 1–7, does not change. |
| 2 | Division | High. Consistent across sources within each province. |
| 3 | District | Good where marked documented; reasonable where marked derived. |
| 4–5 | Local zone | Largely unknown. Only 23 zones can be named at all; the table was never published. |
Corrections
District boundaries move, districts are created and split, and community lists carry errors. If you can show an entry is wrong — ideally with a published source — please send it in. Corrections backed by evidence are applied and the provenance mark updated. The register was last reviewed end to end on 2026-09-02.
Legal & ethics
These are commitments, not disclaimers. They describe how the project is run and what it will refuse to become.
Not affiliated with NADRA
This site has no connection to the National Database and Registration Authority or to any department of the Government of Pakistan. It is not endorsed by them, does not act on their behalf, and cannot process anything for you. References to NADRA are descriptive; names and marks belong to their owners.
Not proof of identity or domicile
Nothing this site outputs is evidence of identity, domicile, residence, nationality or entitlement. Domicile is established by a certificate from the relevant district administration. Card validity and personal records are matters for NADRA alone. For any official purpose, use NADRA channels only.
What this project will never build
This project will never include SIM-information lookup, number tracking, or any person-lookup feature. Not as a paid tier, not as an experiment, not for traffic.
Tools of that kind are illegal in Pakistan under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 (PECA), which criminalises unauthorised access to, copying of, and transmission of personal data held in information systems, and they violate the privacy of people who never consented to being looked up. The fact that such sites rank well is not an argument for joining them.
Concretely, the site holds no identity database, performs no server-side lookup of any kind, and could not identify a cardholder if asked. The prefix decoder runs entirely in your browser — no CNIC you type is ever transmitted. A five-digit prefix is shared by hundreds of thousands of people and is categorically not identifying information.
If you are looking for a legitimate check, the guide on CNIC privacy sets out which ones actually exist and why the rest are fabricating results or harvesting your number.
Advertising does not influence the data
Running costs are covered by clearly-labelled advertising. No advertiser has any input into what the register says, and no entry is altered, promoted or withheld for commercial reasons. See the privacy policy for what ad partners collect.