Frequently asked questions
With Device Detection you can input a User-Agent, User-Agent Client Hints, a TAC value, or a native app key. For Geolocation, latitude and longitude will give you the location result.
Data files for our Big, Bigger, Biggest, and Bespoke solutions are produced Monday through Friday. On Friday through to Sunday, if there is a major operating system or browser version release, or a new device added to the market, it won't be present in the data files until Monday or Tuesday (providing we have researched and validated the new release). Data files for our free service are produced once a month. This schedule may be disrupted by UK bank holidays. When this does happen there will be prior warning in the form of a blog or email.
If you use our cloud, the data is automatically updated for you. For on-premise users the data file is available on GitHub.
All of the data files along with the CSV files are located on our Distributor, please have your License Key to hand.
It's great that you want to remove the manual process of pulling the data file. Simply supply a License Key in your call to the Device Detection Pipeline or Engine builder and automatic updates for the Device Detection database will be enabled.
Usage sharing helps us maintain the accuracy of the data file via machine learning. We get data on all the devices, browsers, and operating systems you see in your ecosystem. When using the 51Degrees cloud service or on-premise pipeline, usage sharing is enabled by default. Usage sharing can only be disabled when using the on-premise pipeline.
Our Cloud Configurator contains all available properties. The properties you will need to pay for are shown with a dollar icon.
On rare occasions, we mark some of our properties as obsolete – this is dependent on their relevancy and popularity. Once a property has been marked as obsolete, it will remain in the data files but any new devices will contain default values for that property. If a property you frequently use has been marked as obsolete and is still required for your use case, please let us know and we may re-evaluate our decision.
Hopefully the answer is just hiding somewhere, but if you are having trouble then please contact us here.
All of our metadata can be found on our property dictionary. Can't find a certain property? Contact us and we'll help you out.
You can check out our handy migration guides for Scientiamobile, DeviceAtlas, and OpenRTB here.
We've created a table where you can view our published figures against those that our competitors choose to share in the public view.
Yes! We use a third-party billing service to handle all credit card orders for your monthly and annual subscriptions. If you would like to enter a bespoke contract, then that is still handled by us. Please contact us if you would like to set up a bespoke order.
We try to make it easy for customers to purchase and renew their contracts. You can pay by credit card instantly, or you can place a purchase order to receive an invoice for bespoke orders. Details are then supplied on the invoice on how to pay via bank transfer. Offline billing is available to all subscription levels.
To cover additional costs in the transaction process there is a $75 fee. Alternatively you can pay by credit card to avoid these fees.
American Express, VISA, and Mastercard are all supported.
There are a few reasons why this may be happening. It could be a brand new device, browser in development stage, or your data file could be out of date. If you have a User-Agent that you'd like more information on, test it with our User-Agent Tester. If there is no data on that particular User-Agent, please email it to datasupport@51degrees.com and we'll investigate. Better yet, enable usage sharing so we automatically receive the User-Agent.
It's likely that we don't see the User-Agent often or we don’t support that particular browser app version. If you identify an inconsistency with the detection results, let us know by sending examples to us (via usage sharing or our contact us page) and we will investigate. We will internally discuss whether to support this particular browser app User-Agent, which may result in a one-off support cost depending on the requirements.
The SupportedBearers property values do not explicity give which generation of mobile networks the device supports, but rather it lists the radio technologies supported by the device for each generation of mobile networks. For example, 'LTE' (Long Term Evolution) for 4G and 'NR' (New Radio) for 5G.
We most likely haven't seen those exact HTTP headers across all of our global deployments, therefore the algorithm is trying to make the closest match. Send us any data that has a difference higher than 15 and we'll investigate.
Since the release of iOS 12.2, Apple have made it increasingly harder to detect between Apple devices. It is generally not possible to identify Apple devices from the User-Agent alone – JavaScript can be run to help determine the device model.
51Degrees provides a free public Lite data file which can be used for User Acceptance Testing. We no longer produce separate UAT data files.
This depends on your target development language, but in .NET and Java you can switch easily between on-premise and cloud by calling the 'UseOnPremise' or 'UseCloud' Pipeline builder methods. For enterprise products, you must have a License for both on-premise and cloud.
A Pipeline is a customizable data processing system. At the most basic level, input data is supplied in the form of evidence. One or more flow elements in the Pipeline then perform processing based on that evidence and optionally, populate data values that are required by the user.
We support C, C++, C#, Java, Node, PHP, Python, Varnish, and NGINX. For further language-specific information, visit the documentation below.
For our free cloud service a License Key is not required and you can gain access to all of our free properties. If you want to use one of our paid-for cloud subscriptions you will need a License Key. Progress through our pricing page to obtain a License Key.
Yes! Please keep your Resource Key in a safe place, this is helpful for troubleshooting if you come across an issue.
Google is reducing information that is available within the Chrome User-Agent. They have staggered their User-Agent reduction across desktop, tablet, and mobile Chrome User-Agents and it is due for completion in the first half of 2023. Information on the device (if it is using Chrome) will now only be available via User-Agent Client Hints - Google's own HTTP request header. Therefore if the device is using Chrome, you will need User Agent Client Hint information to determine the device.
You will need to be using Version 4.4.0 or later of our service to enable User-Agent Client Hints. Implementing UA-CH will be dependent on how your configuration is called and whether you have control over the first-party domain. We've described these various scenarios together with examples within our documentation.
Yes. In fact, this is recommended. The device detection algorithm will use the UA-CH data where possible. However, if a match cannot be found for the supplied UA-CH values, then the User-Agent will be used as a fallback. See the Getting Started examples for a demonstration of how to supply UA-CH evidence in parallel with User-Agents
In order to start collecting UA-CH data, your Resource Key needs to be regenerated to include the three Accept-CH Headers for browser, hardware, and platform: SetHeaderBrowserAccept-CH, SetHeaderHardwareAccept-CH, and SetHeaderPlatformAccept-CH.
The User-Agent tester has been updated to accept User-Agent Client Hints as input data. You can use User-Agent Client Hints alongside the User-Agent for a more accurate detection result.
Unfortunately, no. Google's User-Agent Client Hints are a substantial change to device detection, and the complexities surrounding them meant we needed to drastically update our service to accomodate the change. Therefore, we created Version 4. To have full support for User-Agent Client Hints and the User-Agent reduction, you will need to be using Version 4.4 or later of the 51Degrees service.
Please contact us with your queries and explain your specific use case. We'll be happy to help!
For those on our cloud solution, you will automatically be using the latest data. To start collecting UA-CH data, you will need to regenerate your Resource Key with our Cloud Configurator to include the three Accept-CH Headers for hardware, platform, and browser.
Review the products available on our pricing page to find the best plan for you. Once you have signed up and received a License Key, follow our migration documentation below to get started.
We will continue to keep Version 3 (and below) and continue producing the associated data files for as long as our customers want us to. However, there are external factors that can affect the accuracy of Version 3: Google has reduced information present within the Chrome User-Agent HTTP Header. This ultimately means that Version 3 will continue to work if the full User-Agent is present (such as in Firefox), but information will be missing from Chrome User-Agents. The best way to protect yourself against Google's changes is by getting started with Version 4.
Unfortunately, no. Google's User-Agent Client Hints are a substantial change to device detection, and the complexities surrounding them meant we needed to drastically update our service to accomodate the change. Therefore, we created Version 4. To have full support for User-Agent Client Hints and the User-Agent reduction, you will need to be using Version 4.4 or later of the 51Degrees service.