Pramana.Anantasutra: India ID Validator (GSTIN, PAN, IFSC, PIN, UPI)

Pramana.Anantasutra checks and decodes Indian identifiers in bulk. Paste a column of mixed IDs. It works out what each value is (GSTIN, PAN, TAN, CIN, LLPIN, IFSC, PIN code, UPI ID or vehicle registration number) and tells you whether the value is well formed. Where the data allows, it also tells you what the value means: the state, the PAN holder type, the bank branch, or the post offices of a PIN.

Everything runs offline inside the Actor against reference data built into the image. Nothing you send is passed on to a government portal or a third-party API. It is part of the Anantasutra family of small, cheap, honest tools for Indian data.

Who it is for

• Finance and ops teams cleaning vendor masters, GST invoices and KYC exports before upload or reconciliation.
• Developers and AI agents that need a fast, deterministic "is this GSTIN / IFSC / PIN real-looking?" check.
• Marketplaces and lenders screening onboarding forms for typos before a paid verification API call.

What is checked

Type	Example	Checked offline	Decoded
GSTIN	27AAACR5055K1Z7	length, state code (incl. 38 Ladakh, 97, 99, legacy 25/28), embedded PAN or TAN, entity number, check character (GSTN checksum). OIDAR (99..OS.), UIN (..UN.) and non-resident (..NR.) registrations are recognised.	state, PAN, holder type, registration number
PAN	AAACR5055K	structure, holder-type letter, sequence	holder type (company, individual, HUF, ...)
TAN	DELM12345L	structure; placeholder jurisdictions such as XXX are rejected	jurisdiction code, deductor initial
CIN	L17110MH1973PLC019786	listing flag, NIC code, ROC state, year, company category (one of the 12 MCA codes such as PLC, PTC, OPC, GOI, NPL)	all six parts
LLPIN	AAB-1234	structure	series and number
IFSC	SBIN0000300	structure, reserved 0, bank code, branch lookup in the RBI list	bank, branch, address, city, district, state, MICR, NEFT/RTGS/IMPS/UPI flags
PIN code	560001	format, lookup in the India Post directory	district, state, zone, post offices
UPI ID	name@okaxis	format, handle against NPCI and SEBI app lists	app and PSP bank
Vehicle	MH12AB1234, 22BH1234AA	state code (incl. legacy TS/OR/UA), RTO number not 0, number 1-9999, BH-series year, temporary marks	state, RTO code, series

Near misses get a specific message instead of "unrecognised". Examples: a GSTIN one character short, an IFSC with a missing digit (SBIN000300), a PIN with the letter O typed for zero (5600O1, "did you mean 560001?") or a registration number with five digits.

Input

{
  "ids": ["27AAACR5055K1Z7", "SBIN0000300", "560001", "shop.name@okaxis", "MH12AB1234", "N/A"],
  "type": "auto",
  "includePostOffices": true,
  "maxPostOffices": 50
}

• ids: one value per line, any mix of types, up to 100,000 per run. A single string with line breaks also works.
• type: leave on auto, or force one type for the whole list. To force a type for one value, prefix it: pin:110001, pan:AAACX1234F.
• Spreadsheet leftovers are cleaned before checking: surrounding spaces, a leading apostrophe ('27AAACR5055K1Z7), CSV quotes, zero-width spaces, ="..." text formulas and the .0 that pandas adds (560001.0).

Output

One row per input value, in input order:

{
  "index": 1,
  "input": "SBIN0000300",
  "detectedType": "ifsc",
  "valid": true,
  "normalized": "SBIN0000300",
  "decoded": { "bank": "State Bank of India", "branch": "MUMBAI MAIN", "city": "Greater Bombay", "district": "Mumbai", "state": "Maharashtra", "micr": "400002010", "neft": true, "rtgs": true, "imps": true, "upi": true },
  "errors": [],
  "warnings": []
}

errors and warnings are "CODE: message" strings, so you can filter on the code. valid is true only when there are no errors. A run summary (counts by type, how many rows were charged, data versions) is saved as the SUMMARY record in the key-value store.

Common codes: CHECKSUM_MISMATCH, LENGTH, NOT_FOUND, UNKNOWN_BANK_CODE, UNVERIFIABLE (Army Postal Service PIN not in the public directory), SPACES (UPI ID with a space; it is never "fixed" for you), PLACEHOLDER, EXCEL_SCIENTIFIC_NOTATION, TOO_LONG, AADHAAR_NOT_SUPPORTED, UNRECOGNIZED.

Pricing

Pay per result. You only pay for values that were actually validated.

Event	Price	When
Identifier validated	$0.0004 ($0.40 per 1,000)	one result row for a value that was checked
Actor start	$0.00005	charged by Apify once per run at the default 512 MB memory

Examples: 1,000 IDs cost about $0.40, and 100,000 IDs about $40. Never charged: Aadhaar numbers (AADHAAR_NOT_SUPPORTED), blank cells (EMPTY), placeholders (PLACEHOLDER: N/A, null, None, NaN, -, #N/A, 0, 999999 and similar), values over 256 characters (TOO_LONG), and Excel scientific-notation numbers such as 5.6E+05 (EXCEL_SCIENTIFIC_NOTATION). These still get a row so your output lines up with your input. The run stops cleanly at your maximum charge limit and never bills beyond it.

Privacy: Aadhaar numbers are refused

This Actor does not process Aadhaar numbers (Aadhaar Act, 2016). Any value that contains a 12-digit number starting with 2-9, or a 16-digit number (Virtual ID), is refused and masked to the last four digits, wherever the digits appear and however they are grouped (spaces, dots, dashes, commas or other punctuation between the digits): Aadhaar No. 2345 6789 0127, uid 234567890127, '234567890127, 234567890127.0, 234,567,890,127 (Excel's thousands separator), 2345–6789–0127 or 234567890127@upi. That includes UPI IDs built on 12-digit numbers such as 919876543210@paytm. Refused rows are free, and the full number is never written to the dataset, the summary or the log. Privacy comes first, so a cell holding several numbers that together make 12 digits (two PINs such as 560001, 560034) is refused the same way: put one identifier per line.

Limits and what is not verified

• 100,000 values per run, 256 characters per value. Larger lists are rejected up front with a "split the list" message, and nothing is charged.
• Structure and checksums, not live status. A valid GSTIN may be cancelled, and a valid PAN or TAN may not be allotted. The PAN and TAN check letters use an unpublished algorithm and are not verified. TAN jurisdiction codes and RTO office numbers are not checked against an official list (jurisdictionVerified: false, rtoVerified: false). UPI IDs are not checked for existence. CIN status (active or struck off) is not checked.
• IFSC branches come from the razorpay/ifsc release bundled at build time (for example v2.0.62 with 183,214 IFSCs). Branches opened later show as NOT_FOUND, and IFSCs of merged banks are reported as not found.
• PIN codes come from the India Post directory snapshot (as of 2025-10-03: 19,586 PINs, 165,593 post offices). Army Postal Service PINs (9xxxxx) are not published, so apart from the two base post offices listed they are reported as UNVERIFIABLE, valid: false.
• A CIN whose company-category code is not one MCA issues (for example XYZ) is invalid (UNKNOWN_COMPANY_TYPE). The NIC industry code inside a CIN is only checked for shape (5 digits), not against the NIC tables.

Use it from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor (Apify MCP server)

Pramana works well as a tool for AI agents: the output is deterministic and every problem has a machine-readable code.

1. In Claude (Settings > Connectors), Claude Code, Cursor or ChatGPT (developer-mode connectors), add the Apify MCP server https://mcp.apify.com and sign in with your Apify account. To expose only this Actor, use https://mcp.apify.com?tools=motivating_bracelet/pramana-anantasutra. To run the server locally instead, use npx -y @apify/actors-mcp-server --actors motivating_bracelet/pramana-anantasutra with your Apify API token in the APIFY_TOKEN environment variable.
2. Ask in plain language, for example: "Validate these GSTINs and IFSCs with motivating_bracelet/pramana-anantasutra and list the invalid ones with the reason."

The current setup steps for each client are in Apify's MCP documentation (docs.apify.com, "MCP server").

From code, one synchronous call returns the rows:

curl -s -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/motivating_bracelet~pramana-anantasutra/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"ids": ["27AAACR5055K1Z7", "560001"]}'

FAQ

Is a valid GSTIN an active registration? No. "Valid" means the format, state code, embedded PAN and checksum are right, which catches nearly every typo. Registration status is only available from the GST portal.

Why is my UPI ID with a space marked invalid? UPI IDs never contain spaces, and deleting them can produce a different person's ID. Pramana reports SPACES and leaves the value unchanged.

Why is 999999 not a valid PIN? It is the usual filler for an unknown PIN. It is treated as a placeholder and not charged. Other unlisted 9xxxxx PINs cannot be confirmed and are marked UNVERIFIABLE.

My sheet shows 5.6E+05 instead of a PIN. Excel has already dropped digits. Format the column as Text, export it again and re-run. These rows are not charged.

Can I send Aadhaar numbers to have them validated? No. They are refused and masked by design.

Is this an official government service? No. It is an independent tool built on public data. It is not affiliated with GSTN, the Income Tax Department, MCA, RBI, NPCI, India Post or UIDAI.

Data sources and licences

• India Post PIN directory: "All India Pincode Directory" by the Department of Posts, Ministry of Communications, Government of India, on data.gov.in, under the Government Open Data License - India (GODL-India). Contains data from the "All India Pincode Directory" published by the Department of Posts, Ministry of Communications, Government of India, on the Open Government Data Platform India (data.gov.in), used under the Government Open Data License - India (GODL-India). The bundled snapshot was compacted from the khush/india-pincodes v1.0.0 redistribution of that dataset. data.gov.in lists the dataset as updated 2025-10-03.
• IFSC and bank list: razorpay/ifsc (github.com/razorpay/ifsc). The dataset is in the public domain and the code is MIT licensed. It is compiled from RBI NEFT/RTGS lists and NPCI member lists.
• UPI handles: compiled from NPCI's "UPI 3rd Party Apps" and "PPI Apps" tables and SEBI's list of UPI apps for public issues (checked 2026-10-20). An unknown handle is a warning, never an error.
• State, GST, vehicle and ROC codes: ISO 3166-2:IN (with the 2023 update), CBIC GST state codes, MoRTH registration codes and MCA CIN codes, verified 2026-10-20.