Questions, answered plainly

UIDAI's term for an Aadhaar number with its first eight digits replaced by crosses and only the last four visible: XXXX XXXX 1234. It is the form regulated entities must keep when they hold a copy of an Aadhaar document and do not authenticate the number. Aadhaar Masking produces exactly this form, and covers the Aadhaar QR code whole, because the code carries the number.

Card fronts and backs, PVC cards, e-Aadhaar letters and UIDAI verification screenshots; multi-page loan PDFs; sale and gift deeds and agreements with the number in running text in English or Hindi; application forms; Excel sheets; and ZIP archives of any of these. JPG, PNG, TIFF and PDF files, and links to files in your own cloud storage.

Yes, whole, wherever it is on the page. In the benchmark all 2,498 Aadhaar QR codes were covered. Codes that are not Aadhaar's, such as payment codes, e-stamps and links, are decoded and left alone.

Yes. A Devanagari recogniser reads the labels in Hindi deeds and agreements, so "आधार संख्या" before a number is as good a label as "Aadhaar No." in English. Other Indian scripts can be added on request; ask us about your documents.

99.94% of Aadhaar numbers (13,541 of 13,549) and 100% of Aadhaar QR codes (2,498 of 2,498) were masked on 10,001 real loan files sent through the hosted API on 15 October 2026. An independent reader counted the numbers and codes on every page before and after masking, and a person checked every one it said was still readable. The method, the figures and the misses are on the Accuracy page.

8 numbers of 13,549: six are card photos the detector does not find (a card inside a collage of documents, a sideways card with the number at its edge, a blurred card back, a small faint card in a large photo) and two are numbers in Hindi deeds. They are listed on the Accuracy page, and the card photos are the next training round.

A random sample of 35 pages where the engine covered something the independent reader could not read was checked by eye: 33 were real Aadhaar numbers or codes the reader had missed, and 2 were PAN QR codes on e-PAN pages, covered by policy because they share UIDAI's format. No cover on a date, an amount or a word is known in version 1.5.0.

About 500 pages a minute with 40 parallel masking environments, which is a 500-page PDF in about a minute. End to end through the API, from one office connection with 24 files in flight, the benchmark ran at 425 pages a minute; half the files came back within 3.5 seconds.

The same API and engine, deployed into your own AWS account with one CloudFormation stack in about eight minutes. Documents are masked in your account, stored in your bucket and deleted within a day. Nothing leaves the account except the licence check with AWS License Manager and, unless you switch it off, a daily page count. The software is billed on your AWS bill; AWS usage for running it is billed by AWS separately, about $0.0003 a page plus $50–180 a month.

A machine that runs Docker: a Linux server, a Windows or macOS workstation, or a laptop. No GPU is required; the image runs on ordinary CPUs and needs no network at run time. Point it at a folder of images and PDFs and it writes the folder back masked, with a spreadsheet saying what it did to every file.

One HTTPS POST with your file and your API key; JSON back with a signed download link and a per-page record of what was found and covered. Long PDFs and ZIPs answer with a task you poll. There is an interactive tester and an integration guide at mask-api.habilelabs.io/docs, and the Developers page has the quick start.

On AWS Marketplace, annual page packs: 2.5 lakh pages a year from $1,050 or ₹75,000, down to ₹0.10 a page on the largest pack, with 10% off for 24 months and 15% for 36. Packs stack, and masking never stops when a pack runs out: you get an alarm at 80% and 100%. The hosted API and the on-premises edition are quoted for your volume.

It depends on the edition. Hosted API: to HabileLabs' AWS account in Mumbai for the time it takes to mask them, then deleted, typically within 24–48 hours. AWS Marketplace edition: nowhere, they are masked inside your own account. On-premises: nowhere, they never leave your machine. No edition keeps document content in its logs.

The AWS Marketplace edition passed AWS's Foundational Technical Review and carries the AWS Qualified Software badge, AWS's review of its security, reliability and operations. We do not hold ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certificates and do not claim them. The rules the product is built to follow are quoted, with sources, on the Security page.

Request it on the Try it page with your work email. We send you a secure link to upload a card photo, a scan or a PDF of up to five pages and 10 MB; an engineer runs it through the production engine and emails you the masked copy with the per-page record, usually within a working day, along with a note on anything the engine left alone and why. The file is used for nothing else and deleted within 24 hours of masking. Self-serve masking in the browser, with the result in seconds, is coming.