Which format do I need?

For a retail product sold outside North America, EAN-13. Inside North America, UPC-A. For small packaging where neither fits, EAN-8. For a shipping carton, ITF-14. For anything internal — asset tags, warehouse locations, your own inventory numbers — Code 128, which takes letters as well as digits and is compact. Code 39 is older and produces a longer barcode, but almost every scanner ever made reads it, which occasionally matters with old equipment.

What is a check digit and why does it matter?

It is the last digit of a retail barcode, and it is not chosen — it is calculated from all the others. Its job is to catch scanning and typing errors: change one digit and the check digit no longer matches, so the scanner rejects the read instead of quietly ringing up a different product. Enter the first twelve digits of an EAN-13 here and the thirteenth is worked out for you.

What if my number has the wrong check digit?

It is refused, with the digit it should have been. That is deliberate and it is the main reason to use this page rather than the first generator in the search results. Your number came from somewhere — packaging, a spreadsheet, a supplier — and silently correcting its last digit would hide a typo in the one part of the number that exists to catch typos. Far better to find out here than after printing.

Will it pad a short number for me?

No — and most generators will, which is worth knowing. We measured it: asked for an EAN-13 of "123", the underlying engine does not complain, it pads with zeros and returns a perfectly valid barcode. Valid, and for a completely different product. Somebody prints a thousand labels and discovers it at a till. This page counts the digits first and refuses, telling you how many the format needs.

Do I need to buy a barcode number?

To sell in shops, yes — retail EAN and UPC numbers are allocated by GS1, and the prefix identifies you as the company. A made-up number may clash with a real product and shops will reject it. But for anything internal, no: your own inventory, asset tags, library systems and warehouse locations can use any numbers you like, and Code 128 is designed for exactly that.

Is it free to use commercially?

Yes. These are open standards with no licence fee for generating codes. The images are yours for packaging, labels or anything else, with no attribution and no watermark.

No. Everything happens inside this page, on your own device — nothing is uploaded and no request is made. You can disconnect from the internet after the page loads and it keeps working.

Why will my barcode not scan?

Most often it was printed too small or the white space at each end was trimmed — linear barcodes need a quiet zone before the first bar and after the last, and cropping it is the commonest cause of failure. After that: printing at low resolution so the thin bars blur together, scaling a PNG up, or printing light-on-dark. Use the SVG for printing and test a real scan before committing to a print run.

Make a barcode

Processed on your device — nothing is uploaded

Format

Number or text

PNG size

Only affects the PNG. The SVG has no fixed size — it is vector art and stays sharp at any scale, which is why it is the better choice for printing.

Keep the white margin Scanners need it. Removing it is the commonest reason a printed code will not scan.

Your code will appear here