EAN-13 barcode generator

EAN-13 is the retail barcode everywhere outside North America, and the thirteen digits are only two things: twelve digits of number and one digit of arithmetic. The twelve break into a GS1 company prefix and an item reference, and the boundary between them is not in a fixed place — it depends on how many digits GS1 kept when it issued your prefix, which is why you cannot read a product number and say where the company part ends. The thirteenth digit is computed from the other twelve. The field wants all thirteen and will not draw a symbol from twelve, but it does the arithmetic either way.

Appearance
Size
Caption
Caption position
Caption alignment
Colours

340 × 244 px in the PNG

Size units

Specification

Character set
digits
Length
exactly 13 characters
Check digit
calculated automatically by the encoder

Got a whole list of values rather than one? Generate EAN-13 barcodes in bulk

Where it is used

  • Retail packaging for Europe, Asia, Latin America and Oceania, where checkout systems expect thirteen digits
  • Marketplace and distributor listings that will not accept a product without a GTIN issued from a licensed prefix
  • Redrawing a symbol for a packaging refresh, where the number is unchanged and only the artwork is being rebuilt
  • Own-brand ranges, where one retailer numbers hundreds of products out of a single company prefix

How it compares

UPC-A is the same symbol with a digit fewer and is covered on its own page; the more useful comparison is with EAN-8, because that is a decision you actually have to make. EAN-8 is not a shortened EAN-13. It is a separate eight-digit number that GS1 issues one at a time rather than in blocks, and it is issued sparingly, because the eight-digit space is small and finite: you apply for a GTIN-8 and you have to justify it. The justification is geometric. At full size an EAN-13 is 37.29 mm wide including its quiet zones, and the standard lets you go down to 80% of that, which is 29.83 mm. If the pack has that much uninterrupted flat width, the answer is EAN-13 and there is nothing to discuss. An EAN-8 is 26.73 mm at full size, and that difference of a few millimetres is the entire reason the symbology exists — it is for lipsticks, chewing gum and single-serve sachets, not for anything that merely looks tight in the layout.

Common mistakes

  • Putting one number on several variants. A GTIN identifies a trade item as a shopper meets it, so a different flavour, a different weight, a different colour and a different pack count are each a different item and each needs its own thirteen digits. The mirror of that mistake is issuing a new number for something that has not changed — a new label design or a promotional flash is the same item. And a retired number does not come straight back: GS1's management rules keep it out of circulation for 48 months after the last of the item ships, so it cannot collide with stock still moving through the chain.
  • Trusting the check digit to catch a typing error. It catches every single wrong digit, which is what it is for, but it has one blind spot and people run into it. Swapping two neighbouring digits that differ by exactly five leaves the check digit unchanged: 4600051000057 and 4600501000057 are both valid EAN-13s, and this generator accepts both without a word, because both genuinely are. Nothing on the page can tell you that you typed the wrong product. Read the number back against the source before you send the artwork.
  • Making the two quiet zones the same width. They are not symmetrical: the standard asks for eleven modules of quiet zone on the left of the symbol and seven on the right, which at full size is 3.63 mm and 2.31 mm. A designer who centres the code inside a white panel ends up with surplus on the right and a shortfall on the left, and the left is the side that carries the leading digit and tells the scanner where the symbol starts.
  • Placing the symbol where the pack does not stay flat. On a film bag the artwork looks fine and the printed pack does not: bars sitting where the film gathers, over a crimp seal or around the tight radius of a small jar are read at the wrong width by a beam that crosses them at a slant. The symbol needs a flat panel wide enough for the bars and both quiet zones, and on a curved container the bars should run around the circumference rather than along it.

Frequently asked questions

Do the first three digits tell me where the product was made?
No. Those digits identify the GS1 member organisation that issued the company prefix, not the country of manufacture and not the country of sale. A firm registered in one country can have its goods made anywhere in the world, and the prefix on the pack will still be the one it licensed. If you need origin, read the label text — the barcode does not carry it.
What if I only have twelve digits?
Nothing appears in the preview and none of the three download buttons will click — the field is looking for thirteen digits. The answer still arrives, in the status line: it says how many digits it wanted against how many it got, and prints the whole thirteen with the check digit on the end for you to paste back. One trap comes with that. If your number begins with a zero and the leading zero was lost somewhere — a spreadsheet is the usual culprit — the twelve digits left are not your number with its check digit missing, they are a different number entirely, and the suggestion you get back will be a different product's code. Restore the zero first, then check the thirteenth digit.
Do I have to buy a prefix, or can I make a number up?
For anything sold through retail you licence a company prefix from GS1 and allocate item references inside it yourself. The bars are only an encoding — this generator will draw whatever thirteen digits you give it and that grants you no rights over them, and a number you invented may already be printed on somebody else's product. For codes that never leave your own building none of this applies, and a symbology with no registration behind it — Code 128 or Code 39 — is the sensible choice there.
Can I add the five-digit supplement for a price or an issue number?
Not from this field. It takes exactly thirteen digits, so the add-on symbols that periodicals and some book editions carry to the right of the main code are outside what it produces. If your trading partner requires one, the supplement is a symbol of its own printed next to the main code, and you will need a tool that emits the pair together.
EAN-13 or UPC-A on the pack?
Whichever the buyer asks for, and for most of the world that is EAN-13. They encode the same item — a UPC-A is the same number with its leading zero left off — and any scanner built for thirteen digits reads twelve. The asymmetry runs the other way: a till built in the era when twelve digits was the whole world may have nowhere to put a thirteenth, which is why North American trading partners still ask for the shorter form on packs destined for their shelves.

This generator draws a valid EAN-13 symbol, but the image alone does not grant the right to sell a product under it in retail. The prefix is issued by GS1 — register it there before printing this code on packaging.