10,000+ happy Canadian customers | 3m+ Barcodes sold globally | 10,000+ scans each day

 

How Barcodes Work:

What the Numbers Actually Mean

Most of what people assume about barcodes is wrong, and those assumptions usually hold up a purchase. This page covers what a barcode number actually is, what it does and doesn’t contain, and where the numbers come from.

If you already know all that and want to buy, go straight to retail barcode packages.

Is there any product information inside a barcode?

No. This is the single most common misunderstanding, and it explains almost everything else on this page.

The bars and spaces encode one thing: the digits printed underneath them. Nothing more. There’s no product name, no price, no manufacturer, no ingredients, no country. Scanning is just a fast, error-free way of typing that number into a till.

The number itself is a unique identifier drawn from a global pool and allocated to you. Think of it as a licence plate rather than a description. It identifies your product without saying anything about it.

So how does a retailer know what my product is?

They enter it into their system once, manually.

When a retailer first takes your product, someone scans the barcode (or enters the number) and associates your product details with it in their system: name, description, supplier, retail price. From then on, scanning that barcode at checkout automatically brings up the right product.

Larger chains handle this with a supplier form rather than a person at a keyboard, but the principle is the same. Nothing needs to be sent to us or any central registry for this to work.

It also means the same number behaves differently across stores. Each retailer maintains its own product record and sets its own price against it.

What do the first digits of a barcode mean?

They show where the number was issued, not where the product was made.

This trips up a lot of people. Our numbers begin with 06, which indicates the number originated from the US pool. It says nothing about you, your company, or where your product is manufactured. A barcode starting 06 on a product made in Ontario is completely normal, and there is no digit anywhere in the number that records the country of origin.

Retailers know this. Their systems don’t check it, and it has no bearing on scanning. More on country code prefixes.

One practical exception worth knowing about: some distributors in mainland China ask for numbers issued specifically by GS1 China, on the mistaken belief that the prefix indicates origin. It’s not a technical requirement, and it isn’t how the system works, but if China is your main market, it’s worth asking your distributor up front. Everywhere else, our numbers are used without issue—barcode acceptance by country.

Can I make up my own barcode number?

Not for products you sell through other people.

Retail barcode numbers are globally unique and allocated from a controlled pool, which is the entire point of them. Two different products carrying the same number cause real problems in a retailer’s system, and it’s the retailer who deals with the mess. Invented numbers also risk colliding with those already issued to someone else.

The one situation where you can use whatever you like is a closed loop: products sold only in your own shop, scanned only on your own till, never leaving your system. The moment you supply a third-party retailer or list on a marketplace, you need a legitimately issued number.

Where do barcode numbers come from?

Every legal retail barcode number, including ours, originates from the GS1 system. There are two ways to get one.

Direct from GS1. This is a licence rather than a purchase. You complete a membership application, pay a joining fee and then an annual renewal fee for as long as you use the numbers. If you stop paying, the licence lapses.

From a reseller. Numbers were issued into the system before the current licensing model, and companies like ours hold blocks of them for sale outright. You pay once, the number is yours permanently, and there are no renewals. That’s the model we’ve run since 2006. Why buy from us?

Both routes produce numbers that scan identically. The difference is cost structure and ownership, not function.

Why are there two formats, UPC and EAN-13?

Because North America and the rest of the world standardised at slightly different times, but they aren’t two different barcodes.

UPC-A is 12 digits and is what Canadian and US retailers usually ask for. EAN-13 is a 13-digit international standard. It’s the same number with a leading zero, and modern scanners read either one anywhere in the world.

We supply both versions of your number on every barcode at no extra cost, so you don’t have to choose a market in advance. How the two compare in detail.

What about books, magazines and shipping cartons?

These use the same underlying system with different number types:

  • Books need an ISBN, presented as an EAN-13 barcode. Book barcodes.
  • Magazines need an ISSN, also in EAN-13 format. Magazine barcodes.
  • Shipping cartons use ITF-14, a 14-digit number derived from the product’s retail barcode. This is for carton cases moving through a warehouse. If a customer can buy the case as a single unit, it needs a normal retail barcode instead. Carton barcodes.

Do I need to register my barcode anywhere?

No. No registry has to be told your number exists, and a barcode works perfectly well without being listed anywhere.

Registration is optional and does one thing: it puts your number and product details somewhere public, so that anyone searching online or scanning it with a phone app finds your product rather than a blank. If you buy a retail package from us, registration on the International Barcodes Database is free.

Where to go next

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