Comparing QR code generators: what actually matters

A price is only comparable if it counts the same thing, and QR pricing counts at least four different things: nothing at all, codes, scans, or time. A page showing a monthly figure beside a page showing "free" has told you nothing yet.

The unit hides the risk. A per-scan price looks cheap at your current traffic and expensive at the traffic you are actually printing for; a per-code price looks cheap when you plan one code and ruinous when you planned twenty placements. Both figures can be honest and still describe different products.

The only fair comparison is a single number: what this would cost for twelve months at the volume you expect. It sounds obvious and almost nobody does it, because it forces you to estimate scans — which is exactly what a comparison page never asks you to do.

Build the number in three lines. Scans a month times the per-scan rate, plus codes times the per-code rate, plus every option you will really use. Then set that against the flat offer's annual figure and ask what happens at twice your estimate, because doubling is the direction a working campaign moves.

Per-scan pricing punishes success. Per-code pricing punishes scale. A flat fee is the only model where using the product more does not cost more — provided it does not hide a scan cap.

There is a fourth model worth naming: free. A static code costs nothing to serve because there is no redirect to run, and for a link that will never change that is the correct answer rather than a compromise. Paying for a dynamic code only makes sense where the destination might move.

Comparison tables list what can be counted: codes, scans, users, colours. They rarely list who owns the domain a code resolves through, and that single fact decides whether your printed material survives a change of provider.

The same is true of a limit. Ten thousand scans a month means one thing if the code stops working at ten thousand and something quite different if it keeps working with the analytics switched off. Ask for the sentence, not the number.

Lifetime deals that cannot fund ongoing redirects, trials that disable already-printed codes, and "unlimited" claims with a monthly allowance in the small print.

The thread running through all three is that the printed code is treated as the end of the transaction rather than the start of one. A provider pricing as though nothing remains to be paid for after the sale either has a very good answer, or a plan that does not survive contact with a real campaign.