About The Site
What started in 2007 as a simple tool to lookup basic information quickly became the number one source world wide to help users decrypt their Apple product serial numbers. Since then we have adjusted and grown with the demand and offer the most accurate information out there to millions of users every month.
We have partnered up with retailers and auction sites, they use our database to ensure products passing through their companies have not been reported as stolen.
Service providers world wide use our database to quickly have access to all the information they need and in turn provide us with test data ("This particular model can actually handle 8GB of RAM, not just 4GB") always keeping our specs up to date.
What Makes Us different?
There are other sites where you can lookup a serial number and see what kind of machine it is, sure. they all have one thing in common though; they're generic.
Anyone can copy and paste whatever is on Apple's spec pages and give generic data, that's not what we wanted to offer though.
When you lookup a serial number on this site, you will get machine specific results!
Not "This is an iMac with any of these processor and memory options", no. You get "This is an iMac with this exact processor and this exact amount of memory".
Generic data, for the most part, is useless. Detailed and specific data, now that's helpful in a lot of cases! We get these detailed results by putting in the work, comparing submitted data, verifying it any way we can and not addint a model to the database until we are as sure as can be. More on this in the "About Serial Number Collection" section.
Who is "Us" anyway?
This site was started by Jay. A technician that has been Maccentric since 1999.
In 2010 when he took a job at Apple, part of the contract was worrysome (can't disclose details) so the site ownership was transferred to his wife, Wendy. When the contract expired in mid 2020, the site ownership was transferred back to Jay. Wendy still helps with answering emails and other work though.
Disclaimer
Though we make every attempt to have the most up to
date and accurate information on this website, the information in our database is only as accurate as the information submitted to us and may contain errors. AppleSerialNumberInfo.com and/or the site owner makes no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the results obtained from the use of the information on the website.
AppleSerialNumberInfo.com shall have no liability for the accuracy of the information and cannot be held liable for any third-party claims or losses of any damages. |
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About Serial Numbers
Serial numbers are a manufacturers way of tracking model and
build information. Also in case of production flaws serial numbers are very handy tools to see where the flaw occurred and which models are affected. Appleserialnumberinfo enables you to lookup the information of any Mac, iPod, iPhone, AppleTV and many more Apple products. We support most devices dating back to 1984 and we can show you where your product was built, when it was built and even the build number. Besides detailed information about the hardware you can also see if there is a repair program available for your product, how far you can upgrade your RAM, get links to useful tools and much more. Type your serial number in the search field to see what it can tell you about your Apple product!
A serial number only holds hardware information, not personal information. Only the store where the hardware was purchased
holds records with the name, purchase date etc.
Appleserialnumberinfo.com can only read out the hardware information since we are not linked to any store databases.
AppleSerialNumberInfo.com is not affiliated with Apple Inc. in any way.
About Serial Number Collection
To provide our users with the most accurate information, we need serial numbers and model information submitted to us. And not just one submission of a particular piece of hardware. Actually, more is always better. Why? We'll show you with an example.
| Serial |
Model |
Processor |
Memory |
| ABCDEF123456 |
Mac mini (2018) |
3.6 GHz |
16 GB |
Great, now we have the information for that model. But we can't add this to the database just yet, we have to wait for more submitted data on this model. We'll illustrate why with another example.
| Serial |
Model |
Processor |
Memory |
| ABCDEF123456 |
Mac mini (2018) |
3.6 GHz |
16 GB |
| ABCDEF123456 |
Mac mini (2018) |
3.0 GHz |
16 GB |
| ABCDEF123456 |
Mac mini (2018) |
3.0 GHz |
16 GB |
| ABCDEF123456 |
Mac mini (2018) |
3.2 GHz |
16 GB |
After receiving a few more submissions, it is now clear that the serial number IS for a 2018 Mac mini. We can also be fairly sure this is for a 2018 Mac mini with 16GB of memory but the Processor speeds are all over the place.
We have to wait for more submitted data to fine tune this. Sometimes this will lead to an overwhelming amount of data pointing to a specific configuration but the data can also remain inconclusive. When this happens, we can be reasonably sure this is a custom ordered machine (CTO) and we will add it to the database as such.
Sometimes it's clear after just a handfull of submissions that a serial number, model and specifications point to one certain configuration. Sometimes it takes a dozen or more submissions before we're at a point where we can comfortably add a model to the database. This is why more is always better!
this is also why our database is one of the most accurate online!
 
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What happens to the submitted serial number and specs?
It's all collected, sorted and stored as long as we are gathering information on a specific serial number or model.
Once we have enough to be mostly sure a specific serial number belongs to a specific model and configuration, a few things happen with that data:
1. A bogus serial number is generated based on all of the submitted serial numbers. The bogus serial number will maintain the specific character count and organization that makes it belong to a specific model and configuration. This ensures no ones serial number ends up in the database.
2. All of the submitted specifications are compiled
and all of the data we are sure on, is added to the database.
The website now officially supports that specific serial number format with that specific model and specification data linked to it.
3. The emails with submitted data we received are archived offline, in case we ever need to double check specs, rebuild the database after a catastrophic failure etc.
It is important to mention that at no time, other than during transit to us, your submitted data lives on a server somewhere. Submitted data is emailed directly to us and an email client immediately removes the email from the server and stores it locally. Encrypted and safe from whomever may be after that sort of data.
Since the start of this project in 2007, and ever since, submitted data has not and will not be shared with anyone. It stays on the local machines, encrypted and offline.
Other sites offer serial number lookups for free, why don't you?
We did, for years, offer unlimited serial lookups for free.
However as the site grew, traffic and bandwidth usage increased a lot. It got to the point where out webhosting provider kicked us off due to excessive traffic and bandwidth consumption. We bounced between hosts for a while, each time with the same result. The only solution was do get a dedicated server set up that would easily accommodate our traffic, bandwidth usage and allow for future growth.
This server cost us upward of $100 a month and this was paid out of pocket for a while by the website owner. Not a sustainable model.
So, a system was introduced where anyone can purchase a package of credits. Everyone else has two free searches every 24 hours, which turns out to be enough for the vast majority of people. This allowed us to make some money, to put towards hosting fees, and keep the site running.
In 2020 we reluctantly added ads to the site which generate some additional income (these ads are not visible to logged in users that purchased a package). And we're now at a point where we almost break even. Between hosting costs and developer costs (good coders to help us out don't work for free), not to mention the countless hours we spend updating the database, doing site maintenance etc. we're nowhere near turning a profit. And profit has never been the goal of this site. As long as we can cover hosting and development costs, we're happy!
As ad revenue and package sales increase, if we do get to a point where a profit is made, the currently free 2 searches, will be changed to 5 searches every 24 hours. Or maybe 10. Or maybe we get to a point where ad revenue alone can keep this site going and we can do away with the package sales completely! Time will tell.
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