What is the KONNRA equivalent of the JST VH 3.96 connector, and is it interchangeable?

I work on connector and harness programmes at KONNRA, so treat the disclosure as given. Everything below comes from manufacturer documents on both sides — and where two documents disagree, including two documents from the same company, I have printed both rather than averaging them.

The equivalent is the KONNRA KR3961 series: a 3.96mm pitch, single-row, through-hole wire-to-board system covering the crimp housing, the crimp terminal and both wafer orientations.

Is it interchangeable? The honest answer is "yes on voltage, dielectric strength, insulation resistance and temperature; no on contact resistance as specified; and only partly on current." Which row decides it depends on your design, so let me take the rows in the order they actually settle the question.

First, the most useful thing I can tell you: our contact-resistance ladder is exactly twice the original's

This is arithmetic rather than opinion, and it is the most useful row in the whole comparison.

KONNRA's product specification (PS-KR3961-01 revision A1) publishes contact resistance as a pair:

• 20mΩ maximum initially — §5.1, measured by dry circuit at 20mV and 100mA per EIA-364-23C.
• 40mΩ maximum after test — §7.1 and the clauses that follow it.

JST publishes the same pair, and every one of the four JST 3.96mm documents publishes it identically:

• 10mΩ maximum initial.
• 20mΩ maximum after test.

Those four documents are the crimp VH catalogue eVH.pdf, the high-box catalogue eVH-H.pdf, the quick-connect catalogue eVH-QC.pdf and the VR catalogue eVR.pdf. Four documents, one pair, no exceptions.

So both rows of our ladder are exactly 2× the original's:

• Initial: our 20mΩ against the original's 10mΩ.
• After durability, vibration, shock, heat resistance, cold resistance, humidity, thermal shock and salt spray: our 40mΩ against the original's 20mΩ — nine rows, one relationship, held against all four original documents.

Why that matters in practice: our published initial requirement is identical to the original's after-test limit. A part that just meets our published specification is sitting at the ceiling the original allows after thirty mating cycles, vibration, thermal shock, humidity and salt spray.

If your design is contact-resistance-limited rather than current-limited — low-current or dry-circuit work, where resistance rather than current capacity is the design constraint — that is the number to interrogate. It is a specification gap rather than a product gap, so ask us for measured initial contact resistance instead of the requirement.

One thing in the other direction: the test method does line up. JST measures contact resistance without specifying dry-circuit conditions in its catalogue, while our §5.1 specifies 20mV maximum and 100mA maximum by dry circuit per EIA-364-23C. Matching the method does not narrow the 2× gap, but it does mean the gap is real rather than a measurement artefact.

Second: our 7A at AWG #18 is not the standard JST VH's rating

Most cross-reference guides compare a current figure against a current figure and stop. That does not work here, because JST publishes three different current figures for products it calls VH at this pitch.

The standard crimp VH is rated like this:

• 10A AC/DC — using AWG #16 with the standard type header.
• 7A AC/DC — using AWG #16 with the shrouded type header, per the catalogue.

And JST's own paperwork disagrees about that second figure. The VH catalogue attributes the 7A shrouded-header rating to AWG #16, while the VH product page attributes the same rating to AWG #18. Same rating, same product, two different conductors, two documents published by the same company at the same pitch. I print both rather than choosing the convenient one — and it is worth knowing because our own published 7A happens to sit exactly on the disputed conductor.

Where 7A at AWG #18 genuinely comes from on the original's side is different products:

• The VH high-box type — 7A AC/DC (AWG #18), with 10A AC/DC (AWG #16) available on one circuit only.
• The VR series, which is an insulation-displacement connector and not a crimp VH at all — 7A AC/DC (AWG #18).
• The product page's reading of the shrouded-header figure, as above.

So our 7A is a published general rating of JST's high-box VH and of the VR series, not the standard VH's number. The standard VH's headline rating is 10A, and it is explicitly built on AWG #16. The risk is one of reading rather than of performance: a buyer scanning two datasheets sees "7A" on both and concludes the parts agree, when the original's 7A and our 7A are attached to different conductors in different products.

The clean summary: at 18 AWG we publish 7A and the original publishes 7A on two of its variants; at 16 AWG the original publishes 10A and we publish nothing, because 16 AWG is outside our wire range.

Before you cross-reference anything: 3.96mm is a pitch, not a family

This is the reason a pitch-only search is dangerous, and it deserves to come early. JST sells a crimp VH, a high-box VH, a quick-connect VH and an IDC VR series at 3.96mm, and they are not interchangeable:

• Standard crimp VH — crimp termination, 10A AC/DC on AWG #16 with the standard header, 7A AC/DC on the shrouded header, 250V AC/DC, −40 to +105°C.
• VH high-box type — crimp termination, 7A AC/DC (AWG #18) with 10A AC/DC (AWG #16) on one circuit only, 250V AC/DC, −25 to +85°C.
• VH quick-connect type — insertion with no crimp at all, 7A AC/DC based on φ1.0mm solid wire, insulated solid copper wire of φ0.8mm to φ1.0mm conductor with φ1.1mm to φ1.3mm insulation, 250V AC/DC, −25 to +105°C.
• VR series — insulation displacement (IDC), 7A AC/DC (AWG #18), 250V AC/DC, −25 to +85°C.

Four documents, one pitch, and two different temperature ranges inside the VH name alone. Three of the four are crimp or insertion products and one is IDC, so a part chosen by pitch alone may not accept your wire, your tooling or your harness process.

The rows that match exactly

Stated plainly, because an engineer who just needs to know whether the parts are interchangeable should get this before the caveats:

• Voltage rating: 250V AC/DC on both sides.
• Withstanding voltage: 1,500VAC for one minute on both sides, and the pass criterion matches too — no breakdown and no flashover. A 1,500V test level is only comparable if the acceptance wording is the same, and here it is.
• Insulation resistance: 1,000MΩ minimum on both sides. Ours also names the test voltage: 1,000MΩ minimum at 500VDC applied for one minute between adjacent contacts per EIA-364-21B. A supplier can pass a 1,000MΩ line at a lower applied voltage and the datasheet looks identical, so the test condition is the part that makes the row mean something.
• Temperature range: −40 to +105°C on both sides, including temperature rise from applied current.
• Construction: through-hole mounting and single row on both sides. Neither side publishes an IP rating or a sealed variant.

Two honest qualifiers on that list.

First, the temperature match is against the standard crimp VH specifically. The high-box type and the VR series both publish −25 to +85°C. Those are real JST 3.96mm figures too, so if the part you are replacing is one of those, the limiting figure is the original's and our published range is the more generous claim.

Second, durability belongs on its own line rather than in the match list. We publish 30 cycles at 10 cycles per minute. JST's VH documents publish no cycle count at all, so that row cannot honestly be called a match — it is a row where we document and the original is silent. Our §8.0 insertion and withdrawal force ladder stands alone for the same reason.

The limits, stated as plainly as the matches

• AWG #16 is outside our wire window. Our published conductor range is AWG 18# to 22#. The original covers AWG #22 to #16 (0.33mm² to 1.25mm²), and its 10A headline rides on AWG #16. It is not only a wire-range gap either: JST splits its two contacts by gauge, with SVH-21T-P1.1 covering AWG #22 to #18 and SVH-41T-P1.1 covering AWG #20 to #16, and the coarse contact has no counterpart in our published mapping. A customer on AWG #16 needs a second terminal and quite possibly second tooling.
• Our insulation field is a ceiling, not a corridor. We publish 2.8mm maximum with no minimum; the original publishes φ1.7mm to φ3.0mm. So we are 0.2mm tighter at the top, and silent where the original sets a 1.7mm floor — a thin-wall wire the original would reject could pass our published field. With a retainer-compatible housing the original narrows further to φ1.7mm to φ2.2mm, which means a wire between 2.2mm and 2.8mm is acceptable to us and not usable on the original once a retainer is involved.
• Post-humidity insulation resistance is 100MΩ on our side. Our §7.7 requires 100MΩ minimum after humidity, against our own headline of 1,000MΩ and the original's 1,000MΩ. In a condensing or high-humidity application, get that row confirmed in writing.

So — interchangeable or not?

Treat the KR3961 as a drop-in for a ≤250V, ≤7A, 18–22 AWG application, and as an evaluated alternative anywhere else.

On voltage, withstanding voltage, insulation resistance and temperature, the match is exact and a drop-in evaluation is credible. On contact resistance we are measurably behind the original's published requirement — exactly twice it, on both the initial and the after-test rows. And on the coarse-conductor current rating we publish nothing at all, because AWG #16 is outside our range to begin with, while the original's 10A depends on it.

If you want the paperwork behind those rows, here are the two pages worth opening: the KR3961 cross-reference list and the KR3961 straight wafer page.

https://konnra.com/jst-vh-3-96-connector-complete-guide/
Dongguan Konnra Electronics Co., Ltd