Both make a digital business card. Both are good at it. This page says plainly where Popl is the better buy and where we are, with their prices taken from their own page rather than from memory.
The short answer: Popl and Cardr both make a digital business card, and both are good at it. The difference is what happens after the handshake. Popl is strongest at event lead capture for teams. Cardr is built for the follow-up you keep meaning to send.
Almost always one specific thing rather than a general dissatisfaction. If it is not this one, we are probably not your answer either.
Popl does not publish a price. To find out what it costs you book a meeting, which is the right model for a fifteen-person stand and the wrong one for a person who wants a card this afternoon.
Everything else about Popl is fine, and on the points below they beat us. So the useful question is not “which is better” but whether the thing that sent you looking is a thing we actually fix. On the buying process: Cardr is self-serve, published pricing, and free to start without speaking to anybody.
| Feature | Cardr | Popl |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes, the full card, forever, no card details taken | Not published |
| Paid price | £12 a month, or £9 a month billed annually | Not published. Popl states: "we quote pricing over a meeting instead of publishing it on our website." |
| Apple Wallet pass | Yes, a signed .pkpass on the free tier | Not stated on the pricing page we checked |
| Google Wallet | No, not built yet | See their site |
| Their details come back to you | Yes, two-way exchange on the free tier | See their site |
| Follow-up drafted for you | Yes, on Pro, from the meeting context | See their site |
| CRM integrations | None | CRM integrations listed |
| Physical NFC cards | We do not sell any; bring your own tag | See their site |
Every figure in this table was read from https://popl.co/pages/pricing on 4 August 2026 and is reproduced without editing. Prices in USD are theirs; ours are in GBP. Where a cell says “see their site”, the published page did not state it clearly enough for us to summarise honestly, so we have not guessed. If anything here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Reproduced rather than summarised. Our previous site described a competitor's capabilities from memory and got it wrong in our own favour, so this page shows you the source and the date instead of asking you to trust the summary.
Popl states: "we quote pricing over a meeting instead of publishing it on our website."
Free tier: Not published. Apple Wallet: Not stated on the pricing page we checked. Where a cell elsewhere on this page says “see their site”, their published page did not state it clearly enough for us to summarise honestly, so we have not guessed.
A comparison page that only flatters the people who wrote it is an advert. Here is the honest half.
Popl is built around events at scale: an AI badge scanner, unlimited events and users, CRM integrations and SOC 2 compliance. For a company running a conference stand with a team of fifteen, that is the right shape of product.
Popl is aimed at teams and events, not individuals, and it is sold through a sales conversation rather than a signup page. If you are one person who wants a card this afternoon, the buying process alone will cost you more time than building a Cardr does.
The choice between Cardr and Popl is not close once you know which of these you are. Read down the left column and stop at the first line that is you.
Cardr is self-serve and free to start. You will have a working Apple Wallet pass in about a minute without speaking to anyone. If you later need badge scanning across a fifteen-person stand, Popl is the more serious tool and we are not pretending otherwise.
Checked against Popl’s published pages on 4 August 2026.
Cardr’s free tier is the complete card and it never expires, so at the entry point the answer is yes: it costs nothing and takes no card details. Cardr Pro is £12 a month, or £9 a month billed annually. Popl does not publish a price, so a like-for-like comparison is not possible from public information. Compare the tier you would actually use, not the headline.
Their pricing page did not state it clearly on the date we checked, so we are not going to claim either way. Ask them directly.
There is nothing to migrate. Build a Cardr, add it to your Wallet, and start handing that out instead. Anyone who already saved your old card keeps it; it just stops being the one you share. Cardr also exports everything to CSV or vCard on Pro, so you are never locked in here either.
Cardr’s free plan is the complete digital business card: a signed Apple Wallet pass, your page at cardr.co/yourname, a QR code, unlimited scans and shares, live updates to every saved copy, and the two-way exchange that returns their details to you. No expiry, no card details taken and no scan cap. Popl did not publish a free tier we could verify on 4 August 2026.
Popl is aimed at teams and events, not individuals, and it is sold through a sales conversation rather than a signup page. If you are one person who wants a card this afternoon, the buying process alone will cost you more time than building a Cardr does.
The Cardr free tier is the whole card and it does not expire. If it is not better for you than what you are on, you have lost a minute.