Barcode Reader

The retail family — EAN-13, EAN-8, UPC-A and UPC-E — plus Code 128, Code 39, Code 93, Codabar and ITF, and the two-dimensional ones: QR, Data Matrix, Aztec and PDF417. That covers nearly everything printed on a product, a parcel or a ticket. If a code reads on a phone but not here, it is usually the picture rather than the format: see the question below.

Yes. QR is one of the two-dimensional formats it reads, along with Data Matrix, Aztec and PDF417, so a QR code in a screenshot decodes to its text or link here without pointing a phone at your own monitor. Read a barcode from a photo the same way — the tool works out which kind it is.

That is the whole tool: drop in a photo, a screenshot or a scan, and the number comes back as text. There is no camera involved and nothing is uploaded, which makes it the thing to reach for when the barcode is in a picture on your screen rather than on a box in front of you — a supplier's PDF, a ticket in an email, a product photo from a listing.

No. The decoder runs inside this page, so the image is read by the same machine it is sitting on and never goes anywhere. That is worth saying plainly for this tool in particular: a photograph of a barcode is usually a photograph of an invoice, a parcel or a boarding pass, and those are not files anybody should be posting to a website to read one number off.

Three things fix most failures. Include the white margin either side of the bars — the quiet zone is part of the code, and a tight crop removes it. Take the photo square-on rather than at an angle, since perspective stretches the narrow bars into each other. And use the original rather than a screenshot of a screenshot, because each resave softens the edges the decoder measures. A barcode filling about half the frame reads more reliably than one filling all of it.

Yes. If the image has more than one — a sheet of labels, a page of tickets — every code it finds is listed with its format. They come back in the order the decoder found them, which is not necessarily the order they appear on the page, so check the values rather than the positions.

Retail barcodes end in a digit computed from all the others, so a scanner can tell a real code from a misread. It is part of the number and it is included in what you copy. If you need to generate a barcode rather than read one, the barcode generator works it out for you.

Not directly — it reads images. Export or screenshot the page first, or use the PDF to images tool here and then drop the result in. A full-page export at normal resolution is usually enough; a barcode is only a few hundred pixels wide even on a good scan.

Yes on this page, including the SVGs the barcode generator here produces. An SVG is instructions for drawing a picture rather than a picture, so your browser draws it first and then it is read — at a thousand pixels wide, regardless of the size the file claims, since a barcode drawn at 24 pixels cannot be decoded from 24 pixels. Two exceptions: an SVG whose barcode is a photograph pasted inside it will not read, because the bars are then in the embedded image rather than in the shapes; and the API cannot take SVG at all, since the drawing happens in your browser and a script has no browser. Send it a PNG.