QR codes for business cards.
Two honest options: put your details inside the code, or point at a page you can edit. Each has a real cost, and the wrong one means reprinting.
- Free, no signup
- Nothing you type is uploaded
- Print-ready SVG and PDF
Option 1 — embedded contact card
The vCard type writes your name, title, organisation, phone, email and website straight into the pattern. A scan offers to save the contact immediately, with no page load and no connection needed.
- Works offline, at a trade stand with no signal.
- Does not depend on this site, or any site, continuing to exist.
- Cannot be edited: a changed number means new cards.
- Holds more data, so the symbol needs to be printed larger.
Option 2 — link to a web profile
The URL type encodes an address you already control: your company page, a personal site or a profile. Update that page and every printed card stays correct.
- Details can change without reprinting.
- Shorter content, so a smaller symbol still scans.
- Needs a connection, and breaks if the address stops working.
- The page owner — often not you — controls what is shown.
Laying it out on the card
Put the code on the back, in a corner, with nothing printed inside its quiet zone — not a rule, not a logo edge, not a fold. Dark modules on a light background read best; a very light grey on white looks elegant on screen and fails under a shop's lighting. If you add a small logo in the middle, raise the error-correction level and keep the covered area modest.
To find a size that works, take the module count of your finished symbol into the size calculator, which turns a module count and a module size or printer resolution into the total printed width, and check the export raster with the print resolution calculator. Neither tool reads your contact details or converts a scanning distance into millimetres — you supply the numbers. Send vector SVG or PDF where you can, and print at 100%, never “fit to page”. Denso Wave, who designed the symbol, publish the primary sizing guidance.
A worked example
Say the card belongs to Dana Okafor, sales lead at Northwind Supplies — a made-up business, on the reserved example.com domain. The embedded version holds the name, the job title, one work number, dana@example.com and https://www.example.com/team/dana. The linked version holds only that last address, so it is a much smaller symbol, and when Dana's number changes the page is edited instead of the cards. Replace every field with your own; nothing above is a real contact.
Test before the run
Print one card on the final stock, then scan it with two different phones — one older, one newer — at arm's length, indoors, in ordinary light. A card that fails the proof needs a larger module, not a longer argument. Check that the saved contact contains what you expect: a mistyped email in a vCard is invisible until someone tries to reply. Our scanner decodes an image or a camera frame locally so you can read back exactly what the code contains.
Ready-made designs for both approaches are in the template gallery, and you can change every colour and caption afterwards.
Business card QR codes — common questions
Should the code hold my contact details or a link?
An embedded vCard puts the name, phone number, email and company inside the pattern. It works with no internet connection and never depends on a service staying online, but the printed card is fixed: a new phone number means new cards. A link points at a page you control, so you can edit the details later — but the code is then only as reliable as that page and the connection in the room.
How small can the code be on a business card?
There is no single safe millimetre figure. The workable size follows from the number of modules in your symbol, the printed size of one module, an empty quiet zone four modules wide all round, and how cleanly the material holds ink. A contact card holds far more characters than a link, so it has more modules and needs more width for the same module size. Read the module count from the generator, put it into the size calculator with your printer's resolution, then print one proof and scan it — the proof decides, not the number.
Which fields should a vCard contain?
Only the ones you would hand out anyway: name, job title, organisation, one phone number, one email address and a website. Every extra field adds modules and makes the code denser. A home address on a card you give to strangers is worth thinking twice about.
Do I need an app or an account for this?
No. Modern phone cameras read QR codes without an app, and this generator needs no signup. Nothing you type is uploaded — the code is drawn on your own device.
What if I change jobs?
An embedded vCard cannot be changed after printing; the cards have to be reprinted. If you expect changes, point the code at a web profile you control, keep that address short and stable, and change the page rather than the card.