SDK versioning policy

Introduction

We strongly advise keeping your SDK integration up-to-date.

When unable to regularly deploy the latest Onfido SDK as part of your build process, we recommend upgrading to the latest version at least once per quarter. This cadence will provide a reasonable balance of new value from Onfido against the engineering spend required to deploy it.

Versioning and support lifetime

Onfido uses semantic versioning to designate SDK releases.

Major

Purpose: May contain new products, features and customizations, in addition to bug fixes, security patches and other smaller but important improvements.
Code changes: May contain one or more incompatible changes to the integration interface, depending on whether you use the affected product, feature or configuration. You’ll find these changes clearly described in our migration guides.
Lifetime: Major versions are supported for 9 months after the first release of the next Major version.

Minor

Purpose: May contain new products, features and customizations, in addition to bug fixes, security patches and other changes and improvements.
Code changes: No incompatible changes to the integration interface - any changes required to enable new functionality are optional.
Lifetime: Minor versions are supported for 2 months after the earliest of:
- the first release of the next Minor version
- end of support for the Major version in line with the above policy

Patch

Purpose: Contains bug fixes, security patches and other small changes and improvements.
Code changes: No incompatible changes to the integration interface.
Lifetime: Patch versions are supported until the next Major, Minor or Patch version is released.

Unsupported SDK versions

Versions that are no longer supported will receive no further updates, including feature improvements, product launches, bug fixes and security patches, though they will continue to function until further notice.

How often do I need to update my SDK integration?

We recommend updating your SDK Minor and Patch version as part of your build process, and updating your SDK Major version as often as possible.

Customers on newer versions of the Onfido SDK consistently see better performance across user onboarding and fraud mitigation, so we strongly advise keeping your SDK integration up-to-date.

The mobile ecosystem is constantly changing, with an ever-growing landscape of devices, operating systems, web browsers and hardware-based technologies that your identity verification flow must be ready for. Fraudster behaviour, techniques and tooling also continue to evolve.

To address these issues, we continually improve our SDK. Find our update migration guides and release notes in our Technical Reference for each platform.

When it is not possible to update more regularly, we recommend upgrading to the latest version at least once per quarter. This cadence will provide a reasonable balance of new value from Onfido against the engineering spend required to deploy on a predictable schedule.

We share a SDK release roll-up by email once per quarter, detailing all new functionality since the previous quarterly email. You can find all previous SDK release letters here. To subscribe to the email, please ask your Customer Success Manager.