EDIFACT, X12 and VDA — which EDI standard does your trading partner use?
An overview of the three most important EDI standards: where a Hungarian company encounters each one, and what the practical differences are.
If your customer or supplier has told you "we need to communicate via EDI," the next question arrives fast: which standard? EDI is an umbrella term, not a single format — several distinct standards exist side by side. The three a Hungarian company most often runs into are UN/EDIFACT, ANSI X12, and the German automotive VDA standard family.
Why are there several standards for the same job?
All three exist to transmit structured, machine-readable business documents — orders, invoices, shipping notices. The difference is historical and regional: different organizations developed their own syntax for different industries at different times, and they still coexist today because no one wants to migrate an existing trading partnership overnight.
UN/EDIFACT — the international standard
UN/EDIFACT is maintained by the UN (UN/CEFACT); its syntax is fixed by ISO 9735. It's the most widely used EDI standard in Europe, and effectively the default choice for any Hungarian company trading with an EU partner — across logistics, retail, and manufacturing.
EDIFACT is segment-based: every message is built from fixed-code segments (e.g. BGM, DTM, NAD) separated by delimiter characters. Common message types:
| Code | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ORDERS | Purchase order |
| DESADV | Despatch advice |
| INVOIC | Invoice |
| APERAK | Application error/acknowledgement |
| CONTRL | Syntax acknowledgement |
In retail you'll often meet not "raw" EDIFACT but its GS1-maintained retail subset, EANCOM — same syntax, stricter retail-specific rules.
ANSI X12 — the US standard
ANSI X12 is maintained by the ASC X12 committee under ANSI, and used primarily in the United States. If a Hungarian manufacturer or supplier connects with a US retail chain or automotive OEM, X12 is far more likely than EDIFACT.
Structurally similar — built from segments and elements — but terminology and codes differ. EDIFACT "messages" become X12 "transaction sets," identified by numbers rather than letters:
| Code | Meaning | EDIFACT equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| 850 | Purchase order | ORDERS |
| 856 | Ship notice | DESADV |
| 810 | Invoice | INVOIC |
| 855 | Order acknowledgement | ORDRSP |
The two standards are not interoperable — an EDIFACT ORDERS message can't be read as an X12 850 without translation by one side or an EDI provider. Companies with both EU and US partners typically run both standards in parallel.
VDA — the German automotive standard
The VDA (Verband der Automobilindustrie) standard family is used mainly between German OEMs and their Tier 1/Tier 2 suppliers — and since Hungary's automotive supply chain is closely tied to German manufacturers, this affects many local companies directly.
Unlike segment-based EDIFACT/X12, many VDA standards (e.g. VDA 4905 delivery schedule, VDA 4913 delivery note) use fixed-length, position-based records, where every field sits at a predetermined character position. It's an older format still actively used in automotive, often running alongside EDIFACT in the same supplier relationship — a plant might expect delivery schedules in VDA but invoices in EDIFACT.
A similar legacy regional variant is the TRADACOMS standard, still used in pockets of UK retail — a pre-EDIFACT, UK-specific format gradually being replaced by EDIFACT at major chains, but still active.
Quick comparison
| Standard | Maintained by | Typical region | Structure |
|---|---|---|---|
| UN/EDIFACT | UN/CEFACT | Europe, global trade | Segment-based, delimiter-separated |
| ANSI X12 | ASC X12 / ANSI | USA | Segment-based, different code system |
| VDA | Verband der Automobilindustrie | Germany, automotive | Often fixed-length records |
| TRADACOMS | GS1 UK (formerly ANA) | United Kingdom, retail | Segment-based, non-EDIFACT syntax |
Which standard will I actually use?
In practice your trading partner dictates this, not you. Common patterns:
- EU retail/logistics partner → typically EDIFACT or EANCOM
- US retail/automotive partner → typically X12
- German automotive OEM or Tier 1 → typically VDA, often alongside EDIFACT
- UK retail partner (legacy connections) → occasionally TRADACOMS
If you're unsure which standard a message you've received matches, or whether it's syntactically valid, check it with our EDIFACT validator. The EDIFACT playground view, X12 view, and VDA view each break the format down message by message, making it easier to identify what you're looking at.
Where to go next
If you're still new to EDI fundamentals, start with part one of our "How EDI Works in Practice" series. For detailed segment structures of individual EDIFACT message types, see the full message reference.