PAN and GSTIN are different identifiers issued for different purposes, but they are directly linked: a GSTIN physically contains a PAN.
What each one is
PAN — Permanent Account Number — is a ten-character income tax identifier issued to a person or entity. It is national, permanent and singular: one legal entity, one PAN.
GSTIN is a 15-character GST registration identifier. It is per state, and a single entity can hold many of them.
The link
Characters 3 to 12 of a GSTIN are the PAN of the registered person. So if you know a GSTIN, you already know the PAN it belongs to. The reverse is not true in the same way: knowing a PAN tells you the middle of any GSTIN the entity holds, but not the state code or the entity number, and not whether a registration exists at all.
The fourth character of the PAN indicates the holder type. C is a company, P an individual, F a firm, H a Hindu Undivided Family, T a trust, A an association of persons. Because the PAN is inside the GSTIN, that character carries through — which is why the entity type implied by a GSTIN usually matches the constitution of business shown in a lookup.
One PAN, many GSTINs
GST registration is state-wise. A company with warehouses in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Delhi will normally hold three registrations, and therefore three GSTINs, all sharing the same ten PAN characters:
- 27 + PAN + 1Z + check
- 29 + PAN + 1Z + check
- 07 + PAN + 1Z + check
They are separate registrations with separate compliance obligations, separate returns and potentially different statuses. One can be cancelled while the others remain active.
Within a single state, an entity may also hold more than one registration for separate business verticals. Those differ in the thirteenth character.
What this means when you verify a supplier
Two practical consequences:
First, matching PANs across two GSTINs is strong evidence that you are dealing with the same legal entity. If a vendor sends invoices from two GSTINs with identical middle characters, that is one company billing from two states, not two companies.
Second, an active registration in one state says nothing about the others. If you buy from a company's Karnataka operation, verify the Karnataka GSTIN — not whichever GSTIN happens to be on the company website.
Limits of PAN-based lookup
People often want to go the other way: enter a PAN and get every GSTIN linked to it. That is a legitimate need, but it is a different operation from a GSTIN lookup, and what any given service can return depends entirely on the data available to it. Be sceptical of any tool that promises a guaranteed complete list of registrations for an arbitrary PAN.
On CheckYourGST, entering a PAN searches our directory of businesses whose GST details we already hold. It is not an exhaustive registry of every registration attached to that PAN, and we say so rather than implying completeness.
Where to go next
- Read what is a GSTIN.
- Read the GSTIN format guide.
- Try GST number search by PAN to see what our directory holds.
- Run a GSTIN lookup with GST verification.