Every product in this category has something labelled free. They are very different offers, and the difference is in the cap rather than the headline. Here is ours in full, and where the other four stop, read from their own pages on 4 August 2026.
Cardr’s free digital business card is the complete product, not a trial of one. A real signed Apple Wallet pass, your own address at cardr.co/yourname, a QR code and a share link, unlimited scans and contacts, live updates to every copy you have already handed out, and the two-way exchange that returns their details to you. No expiry, no card details, no scan cap. What the paid plan sells is the work that comes afterwards — remembering, drafting and chasing — not access to your own card.
Every product in this category has something labelled free. They are not the same offer, and the difference is almost never in the design options. Read from each vendor’s own page on 4 August 2026.
| Product | Free tier | Where it is capped | Apple Wallet on free |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cardr | Yes, the complete card | Nowhere. No scan, share or contact cap | Yes |
| Blinq | Yes, "free forever" | See their page for current limits | Yes |
| HiHello | Yes, the Personal plan | Card scanning capped at 5 a month | Yes, and Google Wallet too |
| Popl | Not published | Pricing is quoted on a call | Not stated |
Each figure was read from the vendor’s own page on 4 August 2026 and links through to the full comparison. Where a company does not publish something, this says so rather than estimating it. If any of it has moved, tell us.
Rendered here by the live product. The QR is real and scannable, and the artwork is drawn by the same code that draws it on an issued pass.
cardr.co/kai
This is the whole growth model and it is worth stating plainly, because it tells you which parts of the product are safe. Your card lives at cardr.co/yourname, so everyone you hand it to sees where it came from. That only works if the free thing is good enough to hand out proudly, which means crippling it would be crippling the only marketing we have. What we sell instead is the part that happens after you put your phone away, and it is genuinely optional: plenty of people will never need it.
We would rather you started on the right one than upgraded and regretted it. Read down and stop at the first line that is you.
Seven steps and nothing to install at either end.
Examples All 16 designsEvery finish rendered live, with the free ones marked.
Pricing What Pro addsFrom £9 a month, and sixty days to change your mind.
Free tool vCard QR generatorNo account at all. Not even an email address.
Cardr’s is: no expiry, no card details taken to start, no scan cap and no contact cap. Elsewhere it varies, and the word "free" is doing different work in each case. As published on 4 August 2026, HiHello’s free Personal plan caps card scanning at five a month, and Popl did not publish a free tier we could verify. Read the cap, not the headline.
There is a business model rather than a catch, and it is worth understanding because it tells you what will and will not be taken away. Every Cardr lives at cardr.co/yourname, so every card handed out shows where it came from. That only works if the free thing is genuinely good, which is why the free plan is the complete card rather than a demo of one. What we sell is the follow-up: the searchable contact memory, the drafted messages and the reminders. Your card is not the thing being held back.
The free plan is how the product spreads, so removing it would be removing the growth model. We are pre-launch and small, so treat that as a stated intention rather than a contractual promise — but it is an intention with a commercial reason behind it rather than a nice sentiment.
Yes, and it is a real signed .pkpass rather than a web page styled to look like one. That is deliberate: the pass is the best part of the product and putting it behind a paywall would mean most people never see what the thing actually is.
No. There is nothing to cancel, because there is nothing running. You give an email address so you can get back into your card, and that is the extent of it.
As many as you like. There is no cap on scans, shares or exchanges on any Cardr plan. What Pro adds is what happens to those contacts afterwards — searching them, keeping notes against them, and having the follow-up drafted — rather than permission to collect them.
It depends on the cap you would hit first. If you need a Google Wallet pass, HiHello’s free tier ships one and ours does not. If you collect a lot of contacts, check the scan limits before you commit. If you want the complete card with nothing withheld and no cap, that is what Cardr’s free plan is, and we would rather you used it for a year than churned off a trial. Every figure here was read from each vendor’s own page on 4 August 2026.
Free forever, about a minute to build, and no card details. The only thing that runs out is the address.