What is the standard ID card size in mm, and why do my prints come out wrong?
By the PdfDady team · Updated · 6 min read
The standard ID card size is 85.60 × 53.98 mm, about 3.37 × 2.125 inches. It is the ID-1 format from the international standard ISO/IEC 7810, and it is the size of nearly every bank card, the PVC Aadhaar, the PVC voter ID and the smart-card driving licence. If your printed copy doesn't match the real card, the cause is almost always the printer scaling the page, not the size you chose.
When you lay out a card for printing, for example with our Aadhaar front and back on A4 tool, use 85.6 × 54 mm and print at 100%. The rest of this explainer covers how each Indian card compares, what goes wrong between screen and paper, and how to check a print.
How Indian ID cards compare
| Card | Size | Where the figure comes from |
|---|---|---|
| ISO/IEC 7810 ID-1 (bank cards) | 85.60 × 53.98 mm | The international standard |
| Aadhaar PVC card | Credit-card sized | UIDAI's description; no mm figure published |
| Voter ID (PVC EPIC) | about 86 × 54 mm, with a tolerance | Card specifications used by state election offices |
| Driving licence (Form 7) | 85.6 × 54.02 mm, ±2 mm | Form 7, Central Motor Vehicles Rules |
| PAN card | No official figure found | Income Tax, Protean and UTIITSL pages don't state one |
In practice, all of these are the same card within a fraction of a millimetre, and no home or shop printer can show a difference that small. The exceptions are older cards: the laminated paper voter ID and the old booklet driving licence came in a range of sizes. For those, measure your card with a ruler and use a custom size.
Our card tools (Aadhaar, PAN card, voter ID and driving licence) all default to the standard size and let you type in a custom width and height in mm.
Why prints come out the wrong size
Scaling in the print dialog
This is the big one. A PDF made for printing has an exact page size, A4 being 210 × 297 mm, and the card is drawn at an exact size on it. Many print dialogs, though, offer (and some default to) Fit to page, Shrink to fit or Fit to printable area. These shrink the whole page so it clears the printer's unprintable margins, and the card shrinks with it.
The effect looks small as a percentage and obvious in your hand:
| Print scale | Printed card size |
|---|---|
| 100% | 85.6 × 54.0 mm |
| 97% | 83.0 × 52.4 mm |
| 95% | 81.3 × 51.3 mm |
| 90% | 77.0 × 48.6 mm |
A 4 mm shortfall is enough for an office clerk to notice the copy doesn't match the card.
Letter paper instead of A4
Some printers and PCs, especially ones set up with US defaults, use Letter paper (215.9 × 279.4 mm). Letter is shorter than A4, so an A4 page fitted onto it is scaled to about 94%, and the card comes out near 80.5 × 50.8 mm. Make sure the paper size in the dialog says A4.
A loose crop
If your crop includes a few millimetres of the table around the card, the whole image is placed in the card-sized space, so the card itself prints smaller than 85.6 mm, with a border of tabletop around it. Crop tight to the card's edges.
A photo taken at an angle
A tilted phone turns the rectangle into a slight trapezium. One edge prints at the right length and the other doesn't. Retake the photo from directly above. Cropping can't fix perspective.
Stretching to fit
Some apps stretch an image to fill a box, which squashes the text. Our card tools never stretch: if your crop isn't exactly card-shaped, the image keeps its proportions and you see a thin margin instead.
Getting the size right, step by step
- Use the right size. 85.6 × 54 mm for any modern card. Measure older cards.
- Crop to the card's edge. No table, no fingers, no shadow.
- Check the resolution. For 300 DPI at card size, the cropped image needs about 1,011 × 638 pixels. For 200 DPI, about 674 × 425. Our card tools show each side's DPI in the preview and warn below 200.
- Print at Actual size or 100%. In Chrome or Edge, open More settings and set Scale to 100. In Adobe Acrobat Reader, choose Actual size. At a shop, ask for "100%, no scaling, A4".
- Check the first sheet. Put your card, or any debit card, on the print. The corners should line up.
Related guides
The card tools place a front and a back on one A4 sheet, which is the format most offices expect. For the details of each card, including where to get the digital copy and its password, see the guides on Aadhaar, voter ID, driving licence and the e-PAN. If an application wants all of them in a single file, our guide on merging PDF files shows how to combine the pages.
Questions people ask
Is ID card size the same as credit card size?
Yes. Credit and debit cards use the ID-1 format, 85.60 × 53.98 mm. People sometimes call it CR80, a name used in the card printing trade.
What is the Aadhaar card size in cm?
About 8.56 × 5.4 cm for the PVC card. UIDAI calls it credit-card sized but doesn't publish a measurement, so measure your own if it seems different.
Why does my card look fine on screen but print small?
The screen shows the PDF at whatever zoom suits the window. Only the print dialog decides the physical size, and "fit" settings shrink it. Print at 100%.
What about passport-size photos?
That's a different standard. See our guide to passport photo size in India.
Does PdfDady upload my card images?
No. All four card tools run in your browser and nothing is uploaded. PdfDady is not affiliated with UIDAI, the Election Commission, MoRTH or the Income Tax Department.