QR code generator

How to use it

1. Type or paste the link or text the code should open.
2. Set the size, and choose colours with a dark code on a light background.
3. Optionally drop a logo in; error correction switches to H so the code still scans.
4. Download the SVG for print or the PNG for screens, then test it with a phone.

Why a logo needs the highest error correction

Every QR code carries redundancy. The four levels — L, M, Q and H — recover roughly 7%, 15%, 25% and 30% of the code’s data if it is damaged, and that redundancy is what makes a code still scan through a scuff, a fold or a coffee ring. A logo in the middle is simply damage you chose: the modules underneath it are gone, and the error correction has to rebuild them.

At level H there is room for that. At L there is not, and the result is the failure mode that makes free QR tools untrustworthy — a code that scans on the phone of the person who made it, in good light, from six inches, and fails on a customer’s older phone across a table. So this tool holds the level at H whenever a logo is present, and caps the logo at 30% of the code’s width, which is 9% of its area.

Printing one

Export the SVG for anything that will be printed — it has no resolution, so it is as sharp on a pull-up banner as on a business card. PNG is for screens. Keep the quiet zone: the empty margin around the code is part of the specification, not padding, and cropping to the edge of the black is the second most common reason a code will not scan.

Contrast matters more than colour. A dark code on a light background is what every scanner expects; inverting it, or using two colours of similar brightness, will fail on many of the readers people actually use. Test the actual printed piece, at the actual size, with a phone that is not yours.

Nothing here is tracked, and nothing expires

The code is generated in your browser and encodes exactly the text you typed. It is not a redirect through a service that counts scans and can stop working — which is what a “free dynamic QR code” usually is, and why a printed code that depends on one can go dead.