EAN-8 barcode generator

EAN-8 exists for one reason: some packs are too small for a full retail barcode and still have to be sold through a till. It is eight digits — seven of number and one of arithmetic — and it buys you roughly eight millimetres of width against an EAN-13. That is the whole trade, and it is worth measuring before you commit to it, because the eight digits come out of a pool that GS1 rations one number at a time.

Appearance
Size
Caption
Caption position
Caption alignment
Colours

244 × 203 px in the PNG

Size units

Specification

Character set
digits
Length
exactly 8 characters
Check digit
calculated automatically by the encoder

Got a whole list of values rather than one? Generate EAN-8 barcodes in bulk

Where it is used

  • Single-serve and sachet packs, where the printable face is a few centimetres across and the ingredient list has first claim on it
  • Cosmetics in slim tubes and sticks, where the flat area that can carry bars is narrower than the tube is long
  • Confectionery, chewing gum and similar impulse lines whose whole pack is smaller than the symbol an EAN-13 would need
  • Redrawing an eight-digit code that has already been issued, when the pack design is being rebuilt and only the artwork changes

How it compares

The comparison that matters is with EAN-13, and it is arithmetic rather than opinion. At full size an EAN-13 is 113 modules across including its quiet zones — 95 of bars, 11 modules of quiet zone on the left and 7 on the right — which at a 0.33 mm module is 37.29 mm. EAN-8 is 67 modules of bars with 7 modules of quiet zone on each side, 81 in all, or 26.73 mm. Retail symbols may be reduced to 80% of nominal, so the honest pair of figures to hold a ruler against is 29.83 mm for an EAN-13 and 21.38 mm for an EAN-8. If the pack offers 30 mm of flat, uninterrupted printable width, an EAN-13 fits and there is no case to make. Below that, the switch buys 8.45 mm of width and a little over 3 mm of height. Between roughly 21 and 30 mm is the band where EAN-8 is the right answer, and under 21 mm no retail symbol works and the packaging itself has to change. The other small-pack symbol, UPC-E, is not an alternative here in the same sense: it is 22.11 mm of compressed UPC-A, the same number squeezed by suppressing runs of zeros, so it needs no new number but only works if the number happens to have the right zero pattern. EAN-8 always works and always needs a number of its own.

Common mistakes

  • Applying for an EAN-8 because the artwork feels crowded. Crowding is a layout problem and the number pool is finite: there are seven free digits in a GTIN-8 against twelve in a GTIN-13, so the entire world shares under ten million eight-digit numbers where thirteen-digit numbers run to a trillion. That is a hundred-thousandfold difference, and it is why GS1 member organisations issue GTIN-8s singly and ask what the pack measures. Measure first; the answer is a number in millimetres, not a feeling about the design.
  • Truncating an EAN-13 instead — cutting the bars short so the symbol fits a shallow strip. Reducing bar height is not one of the permitted ways to make a retail symbol smaller. A till scanner sweeps its beam across the symbol at an angle to the direction the pack is moving, and it relies on the bars being tall enough that some sweep crosses every one of them; a shortened symbol reads on the third pass instead of the first, and the operator learns to turn the pack around rather than report it.
  • Deriving an EAN-8 from the EAN-13 you already hold. There is no relationship between them. An EAN-13 contains a company prefix and you assign item references inside it yourself; an EAN-8 contains no company prefix at all, so nothing in it identifies you, and two of your own products can hold eight-digit numbers with nothing in common. Adding or removing digits from a thirteen-digit number produces somebody else's code, not a short version of yours.
  • Carrying the single-pack code onto the multipack. A sleeve of five sachets or a box of twenty sticks is a trade item in its own right and takes its own number — and it has room for a full EAN-13, because a box that size offers 30 mm of flat width on some face. Print the single-unit code on the multipack and the till rings the box up at the price of one sachet. That one surfaces in the takings rather than in an error report, which is why it runs for weeks before anybody looks for it.

Frequently asked questions

Where does an eight-digit number come from?
From a GS1 member organisation, issued as an individual GTIN-8 rather than allocated by you out of a company prefix. That is the procedural difference from an EAN-13 and it changes your planning: a thirteen-digit number for a new line is yours to assign the same afternoon, an eight-digit one is an application that somebody assesses, and the case you make is the size of the pack. Have the number before the packaging goes to plate.
Is EAN-8 just an EAN-13 with five digits removed?
No — they are two separate numbering schemes that happen to be printed with the same bar patterns. You cannot shorten one into the other, you cannot read a company out of an EAN-8, and a scanner that returns eight digits has returned a different identifier, not a truncated one. Downstream systems store it padded out with leading zeros to the standard fourteen-digit GTIN-14 form, which is how identifiers of different lengths sit in one field without colliding; 96385074 is filed as 00000096385074 and is the same number either way.
What if I only have seven digits?
The field wants eight, so seven draws nothing — but the arithmetic runs anyway, and the status line hands back all eight digits with the last one filled in. Check the result against your paperwork rather than trusting it: an EAN-8 carries no company prefix, so there is nothing in the leading digits to tell you the number is even in a range issued to you. On a thirteen-digit code you can catch that by eye. Here you cannot.
Can I move to an EAN-13 later if the pack grows?
You can, but it is a new GTIN, not a renumbering. The eight-digit code identifies that trade item, so a pack that changes enough to need a different number is a different item as far as the standard is concerned, and every listing, order file and label carrying the old code has to be updated in step. Since the choice is expensive to reverse, it is worth making it against the largest pack in the range rather than the smallest.
What do the first digits of an EAN-8 mean?
They point at whichever GS1 member organisation handed the number out, and stop there. Not a country of manufacture, and not a company either, because an EAN-8 holds no company prefix to read. Two ranges are set aside for restricted circulation, meaning numbers a business may assign for itself inside its own operation; those must never leave the premises, since nothing outside knows what they mean.

This generator draws a valid EAN-8 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.