Do QR codes expire?
The pattern printed on the paper cannot expire. It is geometry, and it will encode exactly the same thing in thirty years. What can expire is the redirect service that some codes depend on, and when somebody says a QR code has expired, that service is nearly always the thing that has actually stopped.
Troubleshooting5 min read
The squares have no clock in them
A QR code is a way of writing a piece of text, usually a web address, as a grid of squares a camera can read back. The format dates from 1994, it is an open standard, and there is no expiry field in it and no licence to renew. If the pattern contains your own address, scanning it in twenty years produces your address in twenty years. The only things that can fail are physical (the print fades, the laminate peels) or at the destination (the page the address names gets moved or deleted). Neither of those is the code expiring.
A code with the destination baked into the pattern like this is called static. Nobody can switch it off, including whoever generated it, because between the paper and your website there is nothing to switch.
What people actually mean by expired
The codes that die are dynamic ones. With those, the pattern does not contain your destination at all. It contains a short link belonging to the service that made the code, and that service’s server forwards each scan to wherever you told it to. The arrangement is genuinely useful, because the destination can be changed after printing. It also means the code only works while that server keeps answering. When it stops, every printed copy starts resolving to whatever the service chooses to show instead, which is usually a page asking for money.
So “expired” is the wrong word, and being pedantic about it pays, because the right words tell you what to do next. The pattern is fine. A company stopped providing a service behind it.
The four ways a dynamic code dies
- The trial ended. A lot of free QR generators are time-limited trials of a paid product, and the codes they hand out are dynamic. When the trial runs out, the codes start resolving to an upgrade page instead of your menu or your booking form. This is the most common cause by a distance, and it tends to surface a week or two after the print run, which is the worst possible moment.
- The subscription lapsed. A card expired, a renewal failed, or somebody cancelled without realising the printed codes depended on the account. Most providers switch dynamic codes off when a plan ends; a few keep them resolving. Which kind you signed up with is written somewhere in their terms, and almost never on the pricing page.
- The provider shut down. Companies close. When a redirect service goes, every code it ever issued goes with it, and there is nobody left to reactivate an account with.
- The short domain was lost or retired. Even a healthy company can move to a new short domain and let an old one lapse. Codes carrying the old domain then depend on an address nobody is defending.
If one of these has already happened to something you printed, do not order a reprint yet. There is a sequence, and reprinting is the last step of it rather than the first: start here.
How to tell which kind you are holding
Scan your own code and look at the address the phone offers before you open it. Your own address means static. A short host you do not recognise means dynamic. The full ten-second version of that test is on its own page, along with what to do if yours turns out to be the kind that cannot be changed.
How long do QR codes last
Two separate questions hide inside that one, with different answers.
The format itself is the safest part. It has been in use since 1994, it is an open standard, and native scanning has shipped in phone cameras since roughly 2017. Nothing about it is going away.
A static code lasts as long as the print and the destination do. Outdoors, ink fade and surface damage set the limit; a laminated code in a window lasts years. The likelier failure is at the other end, when the page it points at gets reorganised away. Keep the address alive and the code has no natural end.
A dynamic code lasts exactly as long as the redirect service behind it. That can be decades, and it can be the last day of a trial. The lifespan is a property of the company and of your account with them, not of the code, and no amount of print quality changes it.
Why the answers you find elsewhere hedge
Search this question and most of what ranks says QR codes do not technically expire, then changes the subject. There is a reason the wording goes soft at that exact point. Much of the advice is published by companies whose paid plans are the thing keeping a dynamic code alive, and a plain statement of what happens at the end of a trial is not comfortable ground for them. The hedge is not dishonest. It is an awkward fact said as quietly as possible.
We sell dynamic codes too, so the same interest applies to us, and you should read us just as sceptically. Our answer, plainly: cancelling drops an account to the free tier, printed codes keep resolving, and a test inside every deployment fails the deploy if that stops being true. What the other vendors say happens when you stop paying, quoted from their own pages rather than paraphrased, is collected on one page.
We make QR codes you can re-point after they are printed. The pattern on the page never changes, and the codes you have already printed keep working even if you stop paying.
Three codes free, no card. Paid plans start at £3.49 a month including VAT.