Barcode Generator
EAN, UPC, Code 128 and more. Print-ready SVG and PNG, free.
12 or 13 digits: retail products worldwide
Bar height · 15 mm
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For retail products, get official numbers (GTINs) from GS1 in your country. Made-up numbers may clash with real products.
Which barcode type should you choose?
| Type | What it holds | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| EAN-13 | 13 digits | Retail products worldwide, books (ISBN) |
| UPC-A | 12 digits | Retail products in the US and Canada |
| EAN-8 | 8 digits | Small packs where EAN-13 doesn’t fit |
| Code 128 | Letters, digits and symbols | Shipping labels, inventory, order numbers |
| Code 39 | Uppercase letters and digits | ID badges, asset tags, older industrial systems |
| ITF-14 | 14 digits | Outer cartons and cases in the supply chain |
If your product will be sold in shops or on marketplaces such as Amazon, you need EAN-13 or UPC-A with a GTIN registered to your company by GS1 (GS1 India, GS1 US and so on). For anything inside your own business, like stock rooms, libraries, event tickets and asset tags, Code 128 is usually the best choice, because it’s compact and holds letters as well as numbers.
Barcodes vs QR codes
A barcode stores a short number or code in one direction and is read by checkout scanners and warehouse guns. A QR code stores much more, including links, WiFi details and contact cards, in two dimensions, and is read by phone cameras. Products often carry both: a barcode for the till and a QR code that takes customers to instructions, recipes or reviews.
Printing barcodes that scan first time
- Keep the quiet zone. Leave clear white space on both sides of the bars. Scanners need it to find the start and end.
- Use dark bars on a light background. Black on white is the safest. Red bars are invisible to many laser scanners, and light or metallic backgrounds cause misreads.
- Don’t squash or stretch. Scale the barcode evenly. Cutting the bar height to fit a label is a common reason retail barcodes are rejected.
- Print at the right size. Retail barcodes work between 80% and 200% of the nominal size. Download the SVG for print so the bars stay crisp.
- Test with a real scanner or a phone app before printing a full run, and check that the number printed under the bars matches your records.
Check digits
EAN-13, UPC-A, EAN-8 and ITF-14 end in a check digit calculated from the other digits, so scanners can detect a mistyped number. Enter the number without it and the generator adds it for you. If you copy a full number from your GS1 records, double-check it against the number printed under the preview.
Private and free
Barcodes are created in your browser. Your numbers aren’t uploaded or stored, and there’s no sign-up, no watermark and no limit on how many you make. Need many codes at once? The bulk generator creates hundreds of QR codes from a spreadsheet.