Style a QR code until it looks like yours — then prove it still scans

What actually makes a code get scanned

A QR code is not a picture. It is a grid a camera measures. Four things decide whether a phone can read yours, and every one of them is a design decision that is easy to get wrong.

We decode-test the styles, and we publish the failures

A styled QR code can look immaculate and be unreadable, and the place you usually find out is the print run. So we measure ours, twice, and both records are checked into the repository rather than summarised on a slide.

• 432 of 432 The renderer has twelve module shapes, six eye frames and six eye centres: 432 combinations. Each one is rendered, shrunk, gaussian-blurred and saved as a quality-0.7 JPEG — roughly what a camera and a messaging app do to your code between the wall and the scanner — then read back by two independent decoders, jsQR and ZXing, at three capture sizes down to 240 px, across a short URL, a long URL and a WiFi payload. On 8 September 2026 all 432 passed, with zero failures.
• And the strict sweep Decoded from the raw, unblurred rasterisation instead — no camera, no forgiveness — the same shapes are far less generous, and those numbers are recorded too.
• Vertical bars Failed at 0.72, 0.82, 0.90 and 0.96 of a module's width. Readable only at a full 1.00. The moment a hairline gap opens between neighbouring modules, decoding collapses.
• Dots Readable at exactly tangent — radius 0.50 and nowhere else. Smaller leaves gaps; larger bleeds into the diagonal neighbour. Both fail.
• Diamond Failed at every scale tried, because diamonds meet only at the tips and the grid never joins up.
• Finder patterns Drawn as whole units, and the timing row and column stay square, so no style can break the geometry a decoder uses to work out how wide one module is.

Both numbers are real and they disagree, which is the useful part: a shape that needs a camera's forgiveness is not the same as a shape that reads cleanly under a strict decoder. Being straight about what is wired up today — the generator's own picker offers five of these twelve module shapes plus one more, classy-rounded, that predates this sweep and is not among the 432; the free API exposes three module shapes and two eye styles. The twelve-shape renderer above is verified and ready but not yet the thing drawing your code on this site. Every code on this page came from the narrower shipped set.

A footnote on the finder patterns, since we are being honest: the solid timing row was added on the theory that it would rescue the sparse shapes, and the sweep came back byte-identical with and without it. The gaps were the real culprit. It stays because it is the correct thing to draw, not because it fixed anything.

The style options

The six tiles below are being rendered right now by the free API described further down this page, and the parameters under each one are the real ones. Every code encodes this page's address, so you can check any of them with your phone.

What the browser generator adds on top

Every download format is free

Not free-as-in-trial. There is no file type, no resolution and no transparent background behind a paywall on this site, and there is no watermark on anything, ever. What the paid plans buy is editable dynamic codes and the things we run for them — never a file type.

Twelve print templates, drawn in real millimetres

“1024 pixels” tells a printer nothing. These twelve layouts are drawn at their finished trim size, so what you approve on screen is the size that comes back from the press. Put your own words in, drop in any code, and take away a 300 dpi PNG, a vector SVG or a print PDF.

• Menu table tent105 × 148 mm
• Menu window poster210 × 297 mm
• Counter sticker90 × 90 mm
• Wine list insert99 × 210 mm
• Review stand card148 × 210 mm
• Guest WiFi card148 × 105 mm
• Business card (back)85 × 55 mm
• Event flyer210 × 297 mm
• Product label70 × 40 mm
• Pay-by-scan card105 × 148 mm

Each template measures the printed module size for the code you dropped in and shows you the number in millimetres. Below 0.5 mm it disables the download instead of letting you order a run that will not scan.

A free QR API, with no key

One GET request. No account, no API key, no sign-up step in the middle of your afternoon. This is the endpoint that drew every code on this page.

curl "https://qrcodeharbor.com/api/qr?data=https://example.com&size=512" -o qr.png

That returns a PNG. Add format=svg for vector. Responses are CORS-open and cached hard at the edge, so an image tag pointing at it is simply a working QR code — which is exactly how the codes further up this page are drawn:

<img src="https://qrcodeharbor.com/api/qr?data=https://example.com&shape=rounded&eye=dot">

How this compares, without the invented statistics

There is no scan-lift percentage on this page, because we have never run a study that would produce one. What we have instead is a capture of a competitor's own pricing and product pages, taken on 9 September 2026, and this repository. Where the capture supports a claim it is quoted; where it does not, that is said out loud.

Two caveats we would rather say than have you find out. A dynamic code does stop if you paused it yourself, gave it an expiry date, put a password on it or deleted it — and it still needs our servers to answer. The only code that depends on nobody is a static one, which carries your link inside the pattern itself; that is what a QR code that never expires means here, and it is free.