Do QR Codes Expire?

There Is No Expiry Field in a QR Code

Open the specification and look for the place a date would go. There is not one. A QR symbol is defined by ISO/IEC 18004, and everything inside it does one of four jobs: it carries your data, it carries error-correction codewords that rebuild that data when part of the symbol is damaged, it carries format and version information so a scanner knows how to read the rest, or it is a fixed pattern the scanner uses to find and orient the code.

None of those is temporal. There is no field for an issue date, an expiry date, a scan budget or a licence key, because Denso Wave developed the format in 1994 to speed up scanning on a factory floor, where a reader could not count on a network. A thing that has to work offline cannot depend on asking anyone for permission.

That property never went away. Encoding a code still needs no server at all, which is a claim worth measuring rather than repeating: the offline generator on this site watches its own network activity while it builds a code and publishes every request it sees, including its own.

So the question “do QR codes expire” has the same shape as asking whether a printed word expires. The ink does not stop meaning what it meant. What changes is the world the word points at.

What a Decoder Actually Reads Back

That is easy to assert, so here it is demonstrated instead. Both codes below were encoded by this site’s own generator when this page was built, then rasterised and read back with a QR decoder. The second line under each one is what the decoder returned, not what we fed in.

Both are static symbols. Both are permanent. The only difference is whose address is written inside, and that single difference decides who is able to switch the code off. The first code depends on one domain renewal. The second depends on a company continuing to answer for a four-character slug, which is a promise nobody has made you in writing.

What Actually Stopped Working

Ranked by how often each one turns out to be the answer. That ordering is our judgement from the failure modes the tool is built to catch, not a measurement, and the fifth is on the list only because it is what people mean when they say a code “stopped working”.

Notice which rows carry the vendor chip. Those are the two where the code stopped working because somebody who is not you made a decision, and they are also the two that a different choice at design time would have prevented entirely.

The Clearest Public Example: goo.gl

If you want one example of how this plays out at scale, Google retired its own URL shortener. Links created with goo.gl were scheduled to stop returning a response after 25 August 2025. Google then narrowed the plan so that only links showing no activity in late 2024 were deactivated, and everything still in use was preserved.

Read that second sentence again, because it is the whole argument. The outcome was better than first announced, and it was still decided entirely by the company that owned the redirect, using a rule about your traffic that you were not consulted on. Anything printed with a goo.gl link in the middle sat in that decision, and the QR codes among them would have failed while decoding perfectly.

Google is about as durable a counterparty as exists, and the service was free. A QR provider on a monthly plan is a considerably shorter bet. This is not an argument that redirects are bad. It is an argument that a redirect is a subscription, and you should know when you are printing one into something you cannot recall.

How to Tell Which One You Have, in Ten Seconds

Before assuming anything, scan your own code with a phone and read the URL in the preview banner, without tapping it. That string is the entire contents of the symbol, and it tells you who is in charge.

The difference between the two is worth understanding before the next print run rather than after it, and it is the subject of static versus dynamic QR codes, which measures what the redirect costs you in print size as well.

What Each Part of the Chain Actually Lasts

Most people worry about this list in exactly the wrong order. The part everyone assumes is fragile is the only part with no failure mode of its own.

A code is only as durable as the weakest row you have chosen to depend on. Put a third party’s redirect in the chain and that is your answer, however permanent the symbol above it happens to be.

Printing a Code That Still Works in Ten Years

The practical version, for anyone about to commit a code to something expensive. The first two steps are the important ones, and neither of them requires this site.

1. 1
   Encode a Short Path on a Domain You Control

   Something like example.com/menu. Short enough to keep the symbol sparse, and yours for as long as you renew the domain.

2. 2
   Put a Server-Side Redirect Behind That Path

   Now the printed code is fixed and the destination is editable, which is the property people buy a dynamic subscription for. You own both halves.

3. 3
   Keep the SVG

   It is the master asset. Nothing is saved between visits here, so the file you download is the only copy, and a vector reprints cleanly at any size.

4. 4
   Print Above the Minimum Width, With the Quiet Zone Intact

   The editor shows the minimum for the exact code you made. The four-module blank border is part of the symbol, so a design that crops it breaks the code.

5. 5
   Raise Error Correction Before You Shrink It

   Level Q or H rebuilds more of a damaged symbol. It costs modules, so decide it before the artwork goes out, not after the scuffs appear.

Do the first two and you have bought the property people pay a subscription for. The printed symbol never changes, the destination stays editable, and the only renewal in the chain is a domain you were renewing anyway. Once you have settled on the URL, the generator will show you the minimum print width for that exact code and refuse the download if it cannot read the result back.

What QRMakery Makes Today

Everything this site generates today is static, made in your browser and read back by a decoder before the download unlocks. Those codes have no expiry mechanism and no dependency on us: if this site disappeared tomorrow, every code it has produced would keep working, because nothing is looked up on our servers when someone scans one.

That is a property of static codes rather than a promise from us, which is the point of saying it here. We also do not build the other half yet. Dynamic codes with editable destinations and scan analytics are planned as a paid feature, because unlike static generation they need servers that keep running. If you need an editable destination today, use step one and two above, or use a dynamic provider and go in knowing what the subscription is actually holding up.