Direct comparison
ROR vs GRID: Organisation IDs Compared
ROR succeeded GRID for organisation identifiers. What changed, how the ID formats differ, and why new work should use ROR, not GRID.
Written and maintained by CASRAI Editorial Board
Last updated
Ask CASRAI · included with Regulatory Radar
Ask about ROR vs GRID: Organisation IDs Compared
Ask CASRAI answers research-administration questions and cites the passages behind every claim — and says so when the corpus does not cover something, instead of guessing. It comes with a Regulatory Radar subscription at $29 a month, alongside the daily digest of regulatory changes and the dashboard of what changed.
150 questions a day, on this site, over the API, or inside your own tools through the CASRAI MCP server.
Everything CASRAI publishes — this page, the dictionary, the guides and the news — stays free to read, with no account and no card.
How do ROR, GRID (legacy) compare side by side?
The table below compares ROR, GRID (legacy) across 8 procurement-relevant dimensions, from launched through should new systems use it?.
Side-by-side comparison
| Dimension | ROR | GRID (legacy) |
|---|---|---|
| Launched | 2019 | Predates ROR; curated by Digital Science |
| Current status | Active, current standard | Frozen / read-only — no new public releases |
| Governance | Open community governance: California Digital Library, Crossref, DataCite | Digital Science (commercial) |
| Format example | https://ror.org/02j61yw88 (resolvable URI) | grid.498320.6 (bare string, not a resolvable URL) |
| License | CC0 — fully open reuse | Free to use; not community-governed |
| Relationship to the other | Seeded from GRID's donated dataset at launch; the canonical successor | Predecessor; every ID has a published mapping to a ROR ID |
| Active integrations | Crossref, DataCite, ORCID, OpenAlex, EU Funding & Tenders Portal and more | Legacy references only; being phased out |
| Should new systems use it? | Yes — the default choice | No — map to ROR instead |
Common questions
Common questions about ROR vs GRID (legacy)
Is GRID still updated?
+
No. Digital Science stopped issuing new public GRID releases; treat GRID as a frozen, legacy dataset rather than an actively maintained registry.
Can I look up the ROR ID for a GRID ID I already have?
+
Yes. ROR publishes an official GRID-to-ROR crosswalk file, and ror.org's search will resolve many legacy GRID references directly.
Do ROR and GRID cover the same organisations?
+
ROR's initial dataset came directly from GRID, so coverage overlaps heavily at launch, but ROR has continued adding and correcting records through its open community curation process since, which GRID has not.
