Account number: the digits that sit beside your sort code

Account number: verified on the bank's own page

Ordering is a printed rule, not a rating: banks with more verified identifiers first, then alphabetically. Nothing here is ranked by how good a bank is.

Download the Account number dataset (CSV), free to reuse with citation.

Eight digits, or however many your US bank issues

UK account numbers are eight digits by convention, and a bank that issues shorter ones pads them to eight for payment purposes. If you have been given six or seven digits for a UK account, the payment will usually still work once the bank's own rule is applied, but it is worth asking the payee rather than guessing which end to pad.

US account numbers have no common length. U.S. Bank describes the layout on a check instead: "The routing number is the nine-digit number printed in the bottom left corner of each check. It is followed by your account number in the bottom middle and then by the check number in the bottom right." Position, not length, is what identifies it.

An account number by itself identifies nothing. It is only unique within the bank that issued it, which is why every payment system pairs it with an institution identifier, and why a bare account number in an email is not the security exposure people fear. The pair is what a payer needs, and the pair is printed on cheques for that reason.

Checking an account number is a different question from checking a sort code. A sort code can be checked against a directory; an account number can only be checked by arithmetic, by the bank that holds it, or by a name-matching service the bank runs. Nothing on the open web can confirm that a given account number exists.

Questions people ask

How long should a UK account number be?

Eight digits for payment purposes. Some accounts were issued with fewer and the bank applies its own padding rule; if a payment is rejected for a short account number, the payee's bank is the only place that can tell you the correct eight-digit form.

Can someone take money with just my account number and sort code?

Those two numbers are what a payer needs to pay money in, and they are printed on cheques. The risk is not the numbers themselves but the instructions built on top of them, which is why a Direct Debit needs your authority and why your bank will never ask you to move money to a safe account.

What does my bank mean by account details?

Usually the account name, the sort code and the account number together for a UK account, or the account name, routing number and account number for a US one. Lloyds Bank, for instance, tells business customers to "log into your Online for Business or Commercial Banking Online account" to check the international pair.