There are two kinds and almost nobody explains the difference. One holds your details inside the code and can never be corrected. The other points at a card you can edit forever. Here is how each fails, with real codes rather than diagrams, and both are free.
A QR code business card is a code that hands over your contact details when somebody points a camera at it. There are two kinds, and choosing the wrong one is the mistake worth avoiding: a vCard QR holds your details inside the code, which works offline but is wrong forever if your number changes. A link QR points at a card you can edit, so it stays correct, and it can return the other person’s details to you. Both are free here.
These are real codes, generated on this page at the same moment, encoding progressively more. Look at the grid, not the picture.
This is the argument in one image. A QR code’s grid grows with what you put in it, and the printed size stays whatever you printed. So a full vCard with a job title, an address and three social profiles ends up as a code with modules under half a millimetre across, being read by a phone camera in a badly lit bar, at an angle, by somebody who has had a drink.
The fix is not a better generator. It is encoding less. A short link is a handful of characters no matter how much information sits behind it, which is why the code on a Cardr card looks the same whether your card has three rows on it or nine.
One row here decides it for most people, and it is the one about changing your number.
| vCard encoded in the code | A link to a card (Cardr) | |
|---|---|---|
| What the code holds | Your whole contact record, as text | One short address |
| How dense it gets | Grows with every field you add | Fixed, and always sparse |
| Scans in poor light | Worse the more you put on it | Reliably |
| Works with no signal | Yes, the details are in the code itself | They need signal to open it once |
| Change your number | Reprint everything. The old code is wrong forever | Edit once; every copy corrects itself |
| Links, booking, review | Not really. It is a contact record | Yes, all of them |
| Tells you who scanned it | No. Nothing is transmitted | Yes, and returns their details to you |
Neither is the right answer to everything. A vCard QR is genuinely better in one situation and we say which below.
Which one you want depends on one question: does anything on your card ever change?
Rendered by the same code that puts a QR on an issued Apple Wallet pass, not an image of one.
cardr.co/kai
A QR on the phone already in your hand. No app, no signal needed for the pass itself.
A signed .pkpass, in the app Apple preinstalled. Nothing for them to download.
The same action returns their name, number and email to you. This is the reversal.
Written from what you talked about, then chased before they go cold.
Two ways, and they are not the same thing. You can encode your contact details directly into the code as a vCard, which our free generator does with no signup, or you can point the code at a card page that you can edit afterwards. Encode the details if nothing will ever change; point at a page if anything might.
Yes, both kinds. Our vCard QR generator is free with no account and no watermark, and a Cardr card with a permanent QR is free forever with no card details taken. Be careful with generators that make you sign up: some of those produce a code that redirects through their service and stops working when a trial ends, which turns a printed card into a dead one.
A vCard QR cannot expire, because the details are inside the code and nothing is contacted when it is scanned. A link-based code depends on whoever runs the link. Cardr codes point at cardr.co/yourname and do not expire, and there is no scan limit on any plan including the free one. The codes that do expire are the ones from services that put a redirect in the middle, which is worth checking before you print two thousand of anything.
Almost always because it is too dense. Every character you encode adds modules to the grid, so a full vCard with an address and three social profiles produces a code with tiny squares that a phone camera cannot resolve in poor light or at an angle. That is the case for a short link over an encoded record, and it is the single most common reason these fail in the field.
Twenty millimetres square is a sensible floor for a sparse code, and a dense one needs considerably more. Leave a clear quiet zone around it, print it dark on light rather than the other way round, and never place it over a photograph. If you have to shrink it below 20mm, shorten what it encodes rather than the code itself.
Yes, on any iPhone since iOS 11 and on essentially every current Android phone. The camera app reads QR codes natively, so there is nothing to install. This is why a QR code beats NFC for reach: an NFC tag needs the phone held in a specific place, and a QR code needs a camera pointed roughly at it.
For most people, yes, and we sell no hardware so we have nothing riding on the answer. A QR code can be printed on anything, costs nothing, works at a distance and across a table, and cannot be left at home. NFC is a better object and a better moment. Our NFC page goes through where each one actually wins.
Your own address, a permanent QR that never expires and has no scan limit, and details you can correct after they are printed. Free forever.