Two API Calls to Verify Someone Is a Student — No Document Uploads, No Email Checks

Andreas — Thu, 14 May 2026 09:38:30 +0000

TL;DR: Studid's Free API that confirms a user belongs to a real university — through their own institution's login. Two API calls, no documents, no email verification, no API keys.

The problem

You need to know if someone is actually a student or researcher. The usual options:

Upload a student ID or transcript — privacy hassle, manual review, easy to fake
Check their .edu email — anyone can buy one, not real verification
Build university SSO yourself — SAML certs, metadata, federation paperwork, weeks of work

None of these are good for you or your users.

A different way

The user logs in at their own university (same credentials they use for courses, email, library). You get back a simple result: yes, this person is at this institution. MFA included — the university handles it.

Two REST calls, no protocol knowledge needed.

Your App                   Studid                 User's University
  │                         │                           │
  │── POST /verification ──→│                           │
  │←── { id, link } ───────│                           │
  │                         │                           │
  │── redirect user ───────→│ (picks their university)   │
  │                         │── SAML AuthnRequest ──────→
  │                         │←── SAML Assertion ───────│
  │                         │                           │
  │── GET /verification/id ─→                           │
  │←── { session } ────────│                           │

Step 1: Create a check

No signup, no API key. Pick any secretToken:

curl -X POST https://api.studid.io/v2/auth/verification \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "secretToken": "your-secret-here",
    "redirectUrl": "https://yourapp.com/callback",
    "serviceName": "Your App"
  }'

const res = await fetch('https://api.studid.io/v2/auth/verification', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    secretToken: crypto.randomUUID(),
    redirectUrl: 'https://yourapp.com/callback',
    serviceName: 'Your App'
  })
})
const { id, link } = await res.json()

Response:

{
  "id": "a1b2c3d4-...",
  "link": "https://studid.io/search?id=a1b2c3d4-..."
}

Send the user to link.

Step 2: User logs in at their university

They pick their institution from the list (thousands available), then log in normally at their university — same username/password/MFA they already use. Nothing new to learn.

When done, they arrive at your redirectUrl with ?verificationId=....

Step 3: Read the result

curl "https://api.studid.io/v2/auth/verification/{id}?id={id}&secretToken=your-secret-here"

const result = await fetch(
  `https://api.studid.io/v2/auth/verification/${id}?id=${id}&secretToken=${secretToken}`
)
const data = await result.json()

Response:

{
  "id": "a1b2c3d4-...",
  "session": {
    "authIdentifier": "MCE6NXEQ3FC3PU...@tu-berlin.de",
    "entityId": "https://idp.tu-berlin.de/shibboleth",
    "affiliations": ["student", "member"]
  }
}

What this gives you

Use it for auth — let users sign in with their university. The authIdentifier is a reliable ID you can store in your user table.
Use it for verification — check discounts, gated content, academic pricing. You know the user's institution (entityId) and optionally their role (affiliations).
No email verification needed — the university asserts their identity, not a self-reported address. Skip the confirmation-link dance.
No document review — no PDFs, no photos, no manual approval queues.

The authIdentifier is computed server-side — the API picks the strongest identifier available. Just read one field.

Coverage

Thousands of universities across 70+ national federations (US, Germany, UK, France, Japan, Switzerland, Netherlands, etc.).

🥁 Just shipped the first alpha release of our API 🎉

Andreas — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 11:10:43 +0000

Our free API allows you to authenticate students, researchers and educators with the SSO service of their institution.

A successful authentication provides the user's unique identifier, institution, institution country and affiliation (e.g. faculty, staff, student, employee) to their institution.

To better understand how we can improve Studid, I'd appreciate any feedback or advice you can offer.

Try Studid out https://studid.io

Forem: Andreas