How much data can a QR code store?

Barcodelive
2 min readDec 5, 2022

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QR codes are applied in various aspects in everyday lives.

You can scan a QR code to pay money without much hassle.

Also, you can get full information of a products from name, origin, description, weight,… after a barcode lookup.

More intriguingly, QR codes have been used in areas that no one would have predicted would be ideal, such as marketing.

When you look at the packaging of various products, you will notice QR codes generated with the best QR code generator that are implemented in various ways when scanned.

It either directs you to the brand’s social media or provides you with additional information.

All of this has a reason, and it has to do with the flexibility that technology provides.

No matter which website the QR code redirects to or what specific purpose it serves, it is bound to hold the information and perform the required functionality.

See more: https://youtu.be/temK3U1wr8w

Because a QR code has a maximum symbol size of 177x177 modules, it is able to do so.

As a result, it can have up to 31,329 squares and encode 3KB of data.

This equates to a QR code data size of 7,089 numeric characters or 4,269 alphanumeric characters.

Besides, the technology was created by Japanese engineer Hara Masahiro, it also supports Kanji/Kana characters and can store 1,817 characters.

How long are upc codes? UPC codes just contains 12 digits and maximum upc code length of 14 digits.

Linear barcodes can hold between 8 and 25 characters as well as can not support special characters.

Then, it can be seen that QR code can do much more than others.

The QR Code standards prohibit you from creating a QR Code with any combination of rows and columns.

There are 40 preset sizes from which to choose. These are known as versions.

QR Codes in Version 1 will have 21 rows and 21 columns.

Each subsequent version adds 4 rows and 4 columns.

Version 40 is the largest, with 177 rows and 177 columns, resulting in the 31,329 needed to encode the 3kb of data.

If a QR Code contains a lot of data, it will generally appear “busier” to the naked eye (more modules and generally more tightly packed together).

See more: https://barcodelive.org/how-much-data-can-a-qr-code-store

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