How to choose a QR code generator
Six questions worth asking before you print anything, and the honest answers for us on each of them — including where we are the wrong choice.
Six questions, and the first one is final
Most of what separates one QR code generator from another does not show up on the day you sign up. It shows up on the day the campaign works, or the day you stop paying, or the day the code comes back from the printer. These are the six worth asking first, in the order that costs the most to get wrong.
Where we are the wrong choice
If you need a one-off code for a personal link and will never change it, a static code from any free tool is genuinely fine, and you do not need an account anywhere. If you need proof of who individually scanned a code — a name, a device, a person — we cannot do that by design, and you want a tool built on identity rather than on analytics.
What you can do with it
Our answer to the first one is: forever
A code you make here is a field you edit for as long as the account exists, and the free plan has no expiry date. There is no tier at which the destination stops being editable, because charging you to fix a typo on something already published is not a business we want to be in.
Nothing dies when you stop paying
Downgrading is read-only, never destructive. Every code carries on resolving, no matter what; what stops is making new ones beyond the free allowance. Recording keeps up too, within the free plan's own generous monthly scan allowance.
The trade we make on privacy, stated
No cookie on a scan, no stored address, no cross-site identifier, nothing sold. The cost of that is real and we would rather you heard it here: we cannot tell you who scanned a code, only how many, from roughly where, and on what.
The six questions, in order
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Can the destination be changed after printing?
The only question that cannot be fixed later. A static code has the destination baked into the pattern, so changing it means reprinting every copy; a dynamic code encodes a short redirect and the destination behind it stays editable forever. Any tool can make a static code. What varies is question two.
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What happens when you stop paying?
A dynamic code is a redirect somebody has to keep serving. Several free generators produce ones that expire, or that quietly become a page selling you an upgrade — and every copy already out there dies with it. Ours keep resolving on the free plan, and you can export what you have before you go.
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Is there a scan limit?
There's a generous monthly allowance on every plan, and the question that actually matters is what happens on the scan after it. Never a broken code: a paid plan is billed a flat $5 per extra million scans, and the free plan simply pauses new analytics until next month, so a campaign that works is never the one thing that stops working.
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What does it record about the people who scan?
Some tools set cookies, fingerprint the device, or sell the resulting audience — and if your code is on a menu or a medicine box, that becomes your problem rather than theirs. We record the time, the country, region and city the network reports, the device and browser, and which code. No cookies, no stored addresses, no cross-site identifier, nothing sold.
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Does it survive print?
Error correction, quiet zone, contrast and size decide whether a code works on paper. A generator that hands you a PNG at screen resolution has already lost. Look for SVG or PDF output and control over the correction level.
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Can you get your data out?
Codes, destinations and scan history. If the answer is a support ticket rather than a button, treat the whole thing as rented.
How to do it
Questions
What is the best QR code generator?
It depends on one thing: whether you will ever want to change where the code points. If not, any static generator will do and you do not need an account. If you might, you need a dynamic code, and then the questions that matter are whether it keeps working on a free plan, whether scans are capped, and what it records about the people who scan it.
Are free QR code generators safe to use for printing?
Static ones, yes — the destination is in the pattern and nobody can change or withdraw it. Free dynamic ones are the risk: the code depends on somebody else's redirect, and if it lapses every printed copy stops working. Check the expiry terms before a print run, not after.
Do I need to pay for a QR code?
No. A static code costs nothing anywhere, and our free plan includes two dynamic codes, five static ones, 10,000 scans a month and scan analytics. You pay when you need more codes, more scans, more people, or your own domain on the links.
Try it with one code
The free plan has no expiry and asks for no card, and the analytics behind it are the same ones a paying customer gets.
Free forever for one person. No card, and 10,000 scans a month included.