What is Pin Headers and Female Header?

Headers are a simple connector that can be used in a wide variety of applications, from industrial to consumer electronics. Pin headers consist of one or multiple rows of metal pins aligned into a molded plastic base. Pin headers come in a vast selection of options related to the number of pins or rows, pitch, height, and mounting orientation. Pin headers offer inexpensive, reliable, robust solutions to effectively connect one PCB to another. Pin headers are known as the male side of this connector solution. Their corresponding counterpart is known as the female header.

Female headers are the corresponding parts of headers that mate directly to male pin headers. Female headers (often referred to as socket headers) are made of a plastic housing with many sockets where the male pins are meant to fit. Just like pin headers, female headers are offered in one to four row configurations with a varying number of pins per row. They, paired with pin headers, can also be applied to applications in various industries that require PCBs to be connected. Headers, therefore, provide effective, cost-saving solutions for board-to-board interconnects.