Last Updated on February 24, 2026 by Tatyana Vandich

X12 vs. EDIFACT

Doing business and interacting with trading partners is associated with the need to prepare, send, receive and process a large number of documents. Today, around the world, almost all enterprises, from small businesses to large corporations, use EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) to communicate with business partners.

The most common standards that are used in all Industries are ANSI ASC X12 (X12) and UN/EDIFACT (EDIFACT). Both standards serve to exchange documents electronically and execute business processes between trading partners. The two standards are quite similar; however, there are numerous ways in which ANSI X12 and EDIFACT are different. In this article, we will compare the two most popular standards.

EDIFACT:

• EDIFACT (Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce, and Transport) is an international standard for electronic data interchange that was developed by the United Nations.
• It uses UN/EDIFACT syntax and is widely used in Europe and other regions.
• EDIFACT allows for flexible message definition and supports a wide range of business processes, including e-commerce, procurement, transportation, and healthcare.

EDI X12:

• X12 (also known as ANSI X12) is a standard for electronic data interchange in the United States.
• X12 was developed by the Accredited Standards Committee X12 and is maintained by the ASC X12 Standards Development Organization.
• X12 is used in a variety of industries, including healthcare, finance, and logistics, and is considered a robust and reliable format for data interchange.

EDI Standards in Europe and North America

The first difference between the two EDI standards is the geographic location of users.

– X12 is mainly used in the United States and North America in general.

– EDIFACT is mostly used by companies based in Europe and Asia.

ANSI X12 and EDIFACT Standards Developers

ANSI ASC X12 Standard is developed and maintained by the Accredited Standards Committee X12 (also known as ASC X12) chartered by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1979.

EDIFACT – Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport. This standard is developed and supported by two international organizations: The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

ANSI X12 and EDIFACT Document Structure

Basically, the structures of X12 and EDIFACT are similar. Both standards have principally the same structure but use different terminologies.

The figure below shows the structure of X12 and EDIFACT documents that contain Interchange, Functional Group, Transaction set.

For more information on the structure of EDI documents, please read these articles:

– EDI ANSI ASC X12 Standards – Technical Overview

– What is EDIFACT? | UN / EDIFACT standard overview

 EDI Terminologies

Understanding the terminology used in EDI is essential to successfully implementing and utilizing this technology. Some of the key EDI terminologies include EDI standards such as ANSI X12 and EDIFACT, which define the structure and content of EDI messages.

As was mentioned above, ANSI X12 and EDIFACT have different terminologies. The table below demonstrates the difference between both standards.

Terminators/Separators

X12 and EDIFACT use special characters to separate segments and elements in the document.

– ANSI X12 to separate segments generally uses a tilde ( ~ ) and to terminate elements with an asterisk ( * )
– EDIFACT normally uses a period ( . ) between segments and a plus ( + ) within elements.

However, both EDI standards allow customization, and different characters can be used, depending on the implementation.

Composite

A Composite Element is a group (two or more) of simple elements separated by a Composite Separator symbol. Composite Element is used in both standards; however, Composite Element is very commonly used in EDIFACT.

– X12 uses a symbol Greater Than ( > )

– EDIFACT separates composite elements with a colon symbol ( : )

Acknowledgments

Both EDI standards use Acknowledgments.

– X12 uses a Functional Acknowledgment or 997 transaction set. An EDI 997 serves as a response to acknowledge that an EDI transaction was received. TA1 served for describes errors at the ISA level.

– EDIFACT uses CONTRL acknowledgments, which are like the X12 997 Acknowledgments.

X12 Transaction Number and EDIFACT ID

In the ANSI X12 standard, all documents have 3-digit numbers, for example, 810 for an Invoice, 846 for an Inventory Inquiry and Advice, 856 for an Advanced Ship Notice.

According to the EDIFACT rule, the name of the document must be limited to 6 letters, for example, INVOIC derived from the word Invoice, INVRPT for Inventory report, and DESADV is the abbreviation for Despatch Advice.

• Syntax: EDIFACT uses UN/EDIFACT syntax while X12 uses an ASCII-based syntax.
• Message structure: EDIFACT messages have a more flexible structure than X12 messages, which have a more rigid structure.

Different Types of EDI Documents: ANSI X12 vs EDIFACT

The following table lists some of the key EDI X12 Transaction Sets with the corresponding EDIFACT messages.

EDI Standards for Special Industry

In addition to EDIFACT and X12 discussed above, there are many other EDI standards that were developed as a result of specialized business requirements in various industries. For example:

RosettaNet is used mostly in the electronics and technology Industry.

HIPAA and HL7 for Healthcare and Health Insurance.

ODETTE for the automotive industry in Europe.

SWIFT for exchanging messages between banks and financial institutions.

EDI Integration

For clients who do not have the resources to do X12 or EDIFACT in-house, we, at EDI2XML, offer fully managed EDI Services.

For companies who got their own technical resources to work with the REST API, we offer them to use the EDI REST Web Service.

EDI2XML is an EDI service provider with 20+ years of expertise in EDI and integration projects. We have clients located in North America, Europe, and the Middle East, and we work with all EDI standards, including ANSI X12 and EDIFACT. Contact us if you have any questions or EDI integration needs.

Tatyana Vandich Marketing Manager

Tatyana Vandich is a marketing and business technology expert specializing in EDI, B2B integration, and digital transformation. She helps companies automate supply chain operations and achieve seamless data exchange through practical, experience-based insights.

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Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) EDI X12 Standard EDIFACT Standard B2B Integration Digital Transformation in Business Supply Chain Automation