Free Barcode Generator

Which barcode do I need?

The type depends on where the barcode will be scanned and what it has to carry. A shop till expects a retail barcode with a 12 or 13 digit product number. A warehouse scanner reading a carton expects a case code. Internal labels for assets, bins and serial numbers can use any type your scanners read, which usually means Code 128 or Data Matrix. If the product will sit on a shop shelf and you are not sure, use EAN-13: scanners in every country read it, including in the USA.

The other types in the list are for narrower jobs. EAN-8 fits packs too small for an EAN-13. Interleaved 2 of 5 carries an even number of digits densely and is common on older logistics labels. Codabar still turns up on older library cards, MSI Plessey on supermarket shelf edges, and Pharmacode on medicine cartons where a packing line checks it. PDF417 holds a lot of text in a short strip, which is why boarding passes use it. Aztec reads well from a phone screen and needs little or no quiet zone, so transport tickets use it.

In the tool each type is a tile with a small drawing of its bars, so you can match it against a code you already have. Have an old 10-digit book number? Convert the ISBN-10 to 13 digits before you draw it as an EAN-13.

The number comes first

A barcode is a picture of a number. Anyone can draw the picture; the number is what a shop or marketplace checks. For retail products the number is a GTIN, and GTINs are issued through GS1, the standards body that runs the system. Your company licenses a company prefix, or a single GTIN, from its national GS1 office and assigns the item numbers itself. Not sure what kind of number you have been given? The barcode identifier tells you what it is. In the USA a single GTIN costs $30 with no yearly fee; a block of 10 costs $250 plus $50 a year.

Resellers sell numbers more cheaply. They are real numbers, but they were licensed to someone else, so the company behind them in the GS1 database is not you. That is why marketplaces such as Amazon and many large retailers reject them. If you only need internal labels, any numbering works; if the product will be sold through shops, use a number licensed to your brand.

Print size and quiet zones

GS1 sets the size of a retail barcode by the width of its narrowest bar, the X-dimension. Printers and designers still talk about it as magnification, where 100% means 0.330 mm. At 100% an EAN-13 is 37.29 mm wide including its quiet zones, with bars 22.85 mm tall and the digits below them. The GS1 General Specifications allow 80% to 200% for products scanned only at the till. A product that is also scanned in a warehouse needs at least 150%.

Pick a size with the chips for 80%, 100%, 150% and 200%, or fine-tune it with the slider. The real size shows as you change it. US packaging specs often give the bar width in mils, thousandths of an inch; 100% is 13 mils, and you can switch the units to mils or inches in Settings. To see what a pack has room for, pick a magnification here:

Below 80% is outside the GS1 range with one exception: labels printed on demand on a thermal or laser printer may go down to 75%, as long as the barcode covers no less area than it would at 80%. Do not shorten the bars of a retail barcode to fit a small pack. GS1 allows that only when there is no other way, such as on a tightly curved surface. Scale the whole barcode down, or switch to EAN-8.

The blank space each side of the bars, the quiet zone, is part of the barcode. An EAN-13 needs 11 modules on the left and 7 on the right; a UPC-A needs 9 on each side. The preview tints them blue. A common reason a barcode fails at the till is a product name or a box edge pulled into that space. If a printed code is already smudged and you need its number back, recover the missing digits with barcode repair.

Cartons work differently: an ITF-14 runs from 48.7% to 100% (X from 0.495 to 1.016 mm), its bars stay 31.75 mm tall at every size, and the bearer box around it stops a scanner from reading half a code on corrugated board.

Printing it

Most barcodes that fail were drawn right and printed wrong. Before you download, choose how it will be printed under Printing on. Office or home printer gives you a PDF to print at 100%. Product packaging (print shop) gives you an EPS for the designer; if the print shop asks for a bar width reduction, enter it in Settings. Amazon product barcode keeps the full size with the digits shown. Thermal label printer, at 203, 300 or 600 dpi, snaps every bar to whole printer dots, because a bar that falls between dots prints uneven. The Download button follows that choice, and the menu next to it has the other formats.

To check a printer before a long run, download the print test page. It has a 100 mm ruler next to your barcode, so a ruler on your desk shows at once whether "fit to page" shrank it.

Print dark bars on a light background. Black on white is safest. Red bars disappear under the red light most scanners use, and a barcode on a dark background does not scan at all. If your artwork needs colour, set the bar and background colours in Settings. The tool checks the contrast the way a scanner sees it, under red light, and warns you before red on white goes to print.

Settings you change are kept for your next visit, and each one shows as a chip under the preview. Look at them before a print run, so a rotation or a colour from last week does not end up on today's labels.

SVG, EPS, PDF or PNG?

All four formats come from the same set of shapes, measured in millimetres, so a barcode is the same size in every file.

SVG, EPS and PDF are vector files, so the bars stay sharp at any size. Send SVG to a designer or label program, EPS to a print shop that still works in Illustrator or InDesign, and PDF when you want to print the barcode yourself: the page is exactly the size of the barcode. PNG is made of pixels. Use it for Word, spreadsheets and web pages, pick 600 dpi if it will be printed, and never stretch it larger afterwards. When the barcode has to run up the side of a narrow label or box, turn it 90 degrees in Settings before you download.

Many barcodes at once

Switch the tool to Bulk and paste one code per line, or upload a CSV exported from a spreadsheet. Paste a mixed list of product numbers and the tool picks the type from the digit count: 8 digits make an EAN-8, 12 a UPC-A, 13 an EAN-13 and 14 an ITF-14. A name after a comma, or in a second column, is kept and printed under the barcode on label sheets. A third column can set the type per row, using names such as ean-13 or code-128. Every row is checked as you paste, and the table shows which ones were fixed and which failed, with the reason.

For serial labels, the sequence builder makes a numbered run such as ASSET-0001 to ASSET-0500. Settings can also replace the digits under the bars with your own text, or hide them. Keep the digits on UPC and EAN codes, where GS1 expects them shown.

The ZIP holds one file per barcode in the format you pick, named after its value, plus a failed-rows.csv when something did not make it. The label sheet PDF lays the barcodes out on Avery L7160, L7163, L7651, 5160 or 5163 sheets, or on a plain A4 or Letter grid with as many columns and rows as you need. When a label is too small for a GS1 barcode to stay above its minimum size, the tool says so and suggests a sheet that fits. One run takes up to 5 000 codes.

Logistics labels and GS1 data

Pallet and shipping labels usually carry more than a product number: a batch, a best-before date, a serial shipping container code. That data is written with GS1 Application Identifiers, the numbers in brackets such as (01) for the GTIN and (17) for the expiry date. Linear labels use GS1-128; small items use GS1 DataMatrix, which this generator draws when you tick the GS1 option on Data Matrix. To read or check an existing string of AIs, use the GS1-128 parser, or check a whole list of AI strings at once.

GS1 wants checkout scanners everywhere able to read 2D codes by the end of 2027, so a QR code with a GS1 Digital Link web address can sit next to the EAN or UPC. It is added to the linear barcode, not a replacement for it. Build one with the Digital Link generator, or build Digital Links for a whole catalogue at once.

Nothing leaves your browser

The barcodes are drawn on your own computer. Nothing you type or upload leaves it, which matters when a list holds unreleased products or customer serial numbers. The tool remembers its settings, such as Printing on, units, colours, rotation and text mode, in your own browser, so they are there next visit. A share link carries the barcode in the part of the address after the "#", which the browser does not send with the page request. The generator reads it and then removes it from the address bar. A chat app or your browser history still keeps the whole address, so keep confidential serial numbers out of shared links.

Standards behind the shapes

The bars come from BWIPP (Barcode Writer in Pure PostScript), an open-source barcode engine. Every example of the types a barcode reader can decode is decoded back by a software barcode reader (zxing) in our tests before it ships. Sizes follow the GS1 EAN/UPC specification and the GS1 tables for ITF-14.

Frequently asked questions