ssid.ai vs macvendors.com
Both turn a MAC address into a manufacturer name from the same IEEE registry. Pick macvendors.com for plain OUI-to-vendor lookup at volume: their published plans are cheaper above 10,000 requests a day and they have run the service since 2011. Pick ssid.ai when the vendor name is not the whole answer, because it classifies randomized (private) addresses as a typed field, carries manufacturer-cited router default logins, and ships an MCP server.
Last updated 2026-08-08 · macvendors.com figures quoted from their published plans
Side by side
| ssid.ai | macvendors.com | |
|---|---|---|
| Response | JSON: vendor, kind, randomized, confidence, source | Vendor name as a plain string |
| Randomized address | Yes — HTTP 200, kind: randomized | HTTP 404, same as an unregistered prefix |
| Router default logins | Yes — 312 models, manufacturer-cited | No |
| Compliance dataset | Yes — free JSON feed | No |
| MCP server | Yes — ssid-mcp on npm | No |
| Free, no key | 100 / day | 1,000 / day |
| 10,000 / day | $10 / mo | $10 / mo |
| 100,000 / day | $100 / mo | $40 / mo |
| 1,000,000 / day | No tier | $100 / mo |
| Vendor data source | IEEE MA-L, re-fetched daily at 04:00 | IEEE, updated multiple times daily |
macvendors.com prices and limits are quoted from macvendors.com/plans, checked 2026-08-08. Check it before relying on the numbers here.
Where macvendors.com is the right answer
It does one job and does it cheaply. The API needs no key for the first 1,000 requests a day, returns a bare string with no parsing overhead, and the published plans undercut ssid.ai everywhere above 10,000 requests a day. It has been running since 2011, which is a longer operating record than ssid.ai has.
If your pipeline resolves OUIs in bulk and stores a vendor name, that is the whole requirement, and paying more for fields you discard would be a bad trade.
Where ssid.ai is different
The gap shows up on addresses that are not in the vendor table. Run the same private MAC against both:
$ curl "https://ssid.ai/api/v1/lookup?mac=DA:A1:19:5F:2C:88"
{ "kind": "randomized", "randomized": true, "vendor": null,
"confidence": 0, "explanation": "This is a randomized (private)
address — common on modern phones …" } # HTTP 200
$ curl "https://api.macvendors.com/DA-A1-19-5F-2C-88"
{"errors":{"detail":"Not Found"}} # HTTP 404The 404 is not an error on their part; a private address genuinely has no vendor. It is undifferentiated, though: the identical response covers a rotating iPhone and a prefix the IEEE never assigned. Code that branches on the difference has to infer it. Since iOS 14 and Android 10 made per-network randomization the default, that case is common rather than exotic.
Three things follow from ssid.ai holding more than the vendor table:
- Router default logins across 312 models — gateway IP, admin username, password and reset steps, each transcribed from the manufacturer's own documentation with the source URL attached. A field with no citation does not publish.
- The compliance index — 72% of 312 tracked models no longer ship a universal default password, the pattern the UK PSTI Act and the EU Cyber Resilience Act target, with a free JSON feed.
- An MCP server so an assistant calls a typed tool rather than scraping a page, plus a correction endpoint agents can write to.
How to decide
Ask what you do with a MAC address that has no vendor. If the answer is “store null and move on”, macvendors.com is cheaper and sufficient. If the answer is “work out whether this is a phone with privacy on, then find out how to log into the router it is attached to”, that is the job ssid.ai is built for.
FAQ
- Is ssid.ai or macvendors.com better for MAC address lookup?
- For plain OUI-to-vendor resolution, macvendors.com is the better buy at volume: their published plans are $40/month for 100,000 requests a day against ssid.ai's $100/month, and they offer a 1,000,000/day tier ssid.ai has no equivalent for. ssid.ai is better when the vendor name is not the whole answer — it returns a kind field that separates a randomized (private) address from a genuine registry gap, carries manufacturer-cited router default logins, and ships an MCP server. At 10,000 lookups a day the two cost the same $10.
- What does ssid.ai return that macvendors.com does not?
- Structured JSON instead of a vendor string: kind (universal, randomized, multicast or invalid), a randomized boolean, a confidence value, a plain-English explanation, and a source object naming the IEEE registry. On a private address such as DA:A1:19:5F:2C:88, ssid.ai answers HTTP 200 with kind: "randomized"; macvendors.com answers HTTP 404, the same response it gives for an unregistered prefix.
- Is macvendors.com cheaper than ssid.ai?
- For MAC/OUI lookup there is no longer a price to compare: ssid.ai does not charge for it at any volume, with or without a key. Where macvendors still wins is sustained very high throughput — ssid.ai applies a per-minute burst ceiling (60/min without a key, up to 300/min on a paid tier), so roughly 86,000 lookups a day is the practical free limit and there is no lookup tier above it. If you need a million vendor lookups a day with a commitment behind it, macvendors sells that at $100/month and ssid.ai does not sell it at all. ssid.ai charges for the router default-login directory and the compliance record instead, which macvendors does not publish.
- Do macvendors.com and ssid.ai use the same data?
- For vendor resolution they use the same upstream: the IEEE registry of organizationally unique identifiers. macvendors.com states it updates from IEEE multiple times each day; ssid.ai re-fetches the MA-L registry daily at 04:00 and exposes the source URL on every response. The router default-login directory is ssid.ai's own compilation from manufacturer documentation and has no macvendors.com counterpart.
- Does macvendors.com have an MCP server?
- No. macvendors.com publishes an HTTP API and no MCP server, so an agent calls it as a plain web request. ssid.ai publishes ssid-mcp on npm, which exposes lookup_mac and submit_correction as MCP tools over stdio with no API key on the free tier.
- Can I use both?
- Yes, and for some workloads that is the sensible answer. A common split is macvendors.com for bulk vendor resolution where cost per request dominates, and ssid.ai where a call needs the randomized classification, a router's default credentials, or an agent-callable tool.