The 30-second summary
nanoid is an excellent in-process, URL-safe ID generator. It's a thin wrapper over the OS CSPRNG with a compact alphabet, and it's the right tool for short, unique IDs you generate by the thousand.
Provable.io doesn't compete with nanoid for IDs — it competes for the moment when "random ID" turns into "random outcome someone might dispute." When the audience is external, an in-process generator can't publish proof. Provable.io can.
Feature matrix
| Capability | Provable.io | nanoid |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Verifiable random outcomes | Compact URL-safe IDs |
| Cryptographic strength | HMAC-SHA256 | OS CSPRNG |
| Third-party verifiability | Yes | No |
| Reproducible from seed | Yes | No (by design) |
| Pre-commitment | Yes | No |
| Latency | ~tens of ms (network) | Sub-microsecond (in-process) |
| Output shape | floats, ints, dice, shuffle, pick, bytes, distributions | Strings over a chosen alphabet |
| Best for | Public-audience draws and decisions | Database IDs, short URLs, file names |
When nanoid is the right answer
Use nanoid for any case where you just need an unguessable, short, URL-safe ID:
- Database primary keys where you want short, opaque, non-sequential IDs.
- Short URLs and share links. Compact alphabet, no special characters to encode.
- File names and storage keys. Same reasoning.
When Provable.io is the right answer
The moment the ID stops being "any unique string" and starts being "the outcome of a draw," nanoid runs out of road. Reach for Provable.io when:
- Which user wins the raffle. A nanoid doesn't prove it wasn't handpicked. See raffle picker.
- Which variant a user gets in an experiment. See A/B bucketing.
- The seed for a public NFT trait reveal. See NFT trait generation.
Try it now
For comparison: a verifiable byte draw you could base64-encode into an ID — except now the bytes have a published proof.
curl "https://api.provable.io/api/bytes?clientSeed=vs-nanoid-demo&count=12&encoding=base64"FAQ
Should I use Provable.io for all my IDs?
No. Use nanoid (or your DB's native ID generation) for IDs; use Provable.io for outcomes. Mixing the two means paying a network round trip for IDs that don't need verification.
Can I derive an ID from a Provable.io outcome?
Sure — base64-encode the bytes from /api/bytes. You'll get a verifiable ID, at the cost of an HTTP call per ID.
Is nanoid cryptographically strong?
Yes — it uses the OS CSPRNG. It just answers a different question than Provable.io does.