The Best Free Barcode Generators

0
331
Customer scanning QR code, making a quick and easy contactless payment with her smartphone in a cafe

To get started with barcoding, you’ll need a barcode generator. There are a lot of free options out there, but only a few of them are truly good. Many of them can generate one barcode at a time, but if you want to label your shelves or products, those tools will waste a lot of time.

However, don’t worry, we took a look at the top three Google results for barcode generator and cut them down to three. We recommend Barcode Tec-IT for most situations, but there are also good reasons to choose the other options. 

Barcode generators should meet these criteria

Before we get into our recommendations, here’s a quick rundown of what features to look for:

  • Create multiple types of barcodes (i.e. symbols)
  • Several barcodes can be generated simultaneously
  • Provide easy access to the resulting barcode images

It’s a pretty simple list, but you’d be surprised at how many tools miss the mark because they’d prefer to market to you first and then help you later. 

The focus here will not be on those tools-we will focus on the good stuff and why we think it’s worth your time. 

A barcode from TEC-IT

Barcode TEC-IT is the most popular barcode generator on Google. Barcode TEC-IT is the most popular barcode generator on Google. The tool generates barcode numbers and images that are ready to print on labels, and it covers all the common symbologies, including UPC, EAN, CODE39, and CODE128. Telepen Alpha and Pharmacode are also specialized options. 

The majority of barcode generators require you to already have a set of numbers you wish to convert into barcodes. It also allows you to generate barcode numbers with your own prefixes and suffixes (something our barcode software also does). It is great because you might want one category of products to be prefixed with “RED” and another category with “BLUE”. 

A single .zip file containing several barcodes can also be downloaded from the Barcode TEC-IT website, so you can generate all of the barcodes you need in one sitting and download them all at the same time. Compared to other barcode generators, this saves a lot of time.

Only caveat is that printing multiple image files at once might not be as easy. We recommend using our software, inFlow Cloud, if you want to create a single printable file from your barcodes. Besides generating barcode numbers with suffixes, we also place them onto a single printable PDF that can be printed and cut out. 

On the other hand, if you need to generate dozens of barcodes for free with no setup, then this page is your best bet. The only thing you need to know is the number of barcodes you want to generate, and this tool will do the rest.

Online-barcode-generator.org

It is easier to use than barcode-generator.org, but it doesn’t seem to be as functional. Our recommendation is that you give it a try because it allows you to download barcodes as JPG, EPS, and even SVG files. 

As SVG files are vector graphics, they can be resized to any size without losing detail. This tool is useful if you need a few large barcodes for items on the very top of your shelves. 

This site allows you to create barcodes one at a time, but the barcodes are downloaded directly to your computer. Those don’t sound especially amazing, but many other free barcode generators we tried only emailed you one barcode per session, which is simply not efficient. 

Last but not least, this site offers a good breakdown of each barcode symbology, and what industries they’re usually applied to. If you’re unsure what kind of barcode you should be using, you could try free-barcode-generator.org

Moravcia

Morovia’s tool isn’t the easiest to use because the barcodes don’t automatically download. Instead, you must drag the images out of your browser, or right click on the images to save them. 

If you need to adjust the dimensions of your barcode (for instance, making it taller for easier scanning), Morovia is worth considering. You can also choose between including or excluding text, although we’d generally recommend including text so that it’s easier to tell one barcode from another without scanning. 

Create barcodes and labels with inFlow Cloud

Morovia is a good option if you need to make your barcode taller to make scanning easier (for instance). Oftware can assist you with that. We mentioned it earlier in the post, but inFlow includes a barcode generator with support for prefixes and suffixes. Our system integrates directly with DYMO label printers, so you can create barcode numbers and labels on the same day.

We made a quick video that shows you how easy it is to generate and print barcode labels with inFlow: