Overview

Build live, reusable and trustworthy registries and verifiable credentials — with configuration, not code.

Every digital platform runs on master data — structured, validated records about people, entities and things. Increasingly, this data lives in electronic registries with open APIs, so other systems can use attested, authenticated data instead of relying on paper-based checks. That lowers the cost of trust, especially when claims about people and entities need to be verified.

The challenge

As registries scale, most of them run into the same three problems:

Live

Data goes stale fast. Contact details, credentials and records change constantly, and re-collecting them is slow and expensive.

Reusable

Data trapped in one system can't be reused by another, so every department repeats the same collection and maintenance work.

Trustworthy

Data without a digital signature or attestation can't be trusted elsewhere. A CSV exported from a portal offers no guarantee it's authentic or unedited.

What's needed is an interoperable, unified registry infrastructure that makes registries live, reusable and trustworthy at once — a single source of truth that other systems can rely on without re-verifying it.

What is Sunbird RC?

Sunbird RC (Registry and Credentials) is a low-code framework for rapidly building next-generation electronic registries and verifiable credentials.

Instead of writing custom code, you describe your registry through configuration. Sunbird RC then:

• Auto-generates CRUD APIs and registry search

• Issues and manages verifiable credentials

• Handles consent, attestation and verification flows

Open source and free to use. Sunbird RC is MIT-licensed and listed as a global Digital Public Good in the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) registry. It's the core engine behind DIVOC (vaccination and health credentialing) and powers credentialing on India's DIKSHA school education platform.

Watch: What is Sunbird RC?

Hear Dr Pramod Varma, CTO of EkStep Foundation, explain the thinking behind Sunbird RC.

What is Sunbird RC? by Dr Pramod Varma

What Sunbird RC provides

Feature	What it does
Master data store	Model entities with flexible schemas (JSON/JSON-LD); attach validation, lifecycle and relationship rules
Data operations	Secure, API-driven CRUD; open APIs for publishing, access, and key-value or attribute search
Data protection	Encryption, masking, pluggable custom encryption services, audit trails and logging
Single source of truth	Digital signatures for trust and non-repudiation across every registry record
Your choice of database	Out-of-the-box adapters for multiple databases, including Postgres and graph DBs like Neo4j
Modular and configurable	Tailor the platform to your needs; supports multiple languages and multi-cloud deployment
Observability	Telemetry and analytics for monitoring system health, with audit logs to catch issues early

Explore further

Why do we need Sunbird RC?Core CapabilitiesWorkflowsWhat Sunbird RC is and what it's not?Possibilities