One address, written into the pattern, printed and left alone.
You have a page you want people to reach from something physical: a label, a book, a sign at the back of a hall. This generator writes that address straight into the code, so the printed square keeps working with no account, no expiry date and nobody counting the scans.
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A static URL code carries the web address itself, spelled out in the black and white modules. Nothing stands between the paper and the site. A camera reads the grid, decodes the string, notices that it begins with https:// and offers the link as a banner or a notification. iPhones have done this from the Camera app since iOS 11. Android cameras since Android 9, and older handsets manage through Google Lens. One tap and the browser opens.
Length changes the picture in a literal way. A 28-character address gives a sparse grid with fat modules that survives a bad print and a dim corridor. A 180-character address with three tracking parameters gives a dense grid of thin modules that needs a bigger print and a steadier hand. The format ceiling is 4296 alphanumeric characters, but you will regret going anywhere near it.
The single most common failure is a designer cropping the white margin. A QR code needs a quiet zone four modules wide on every side, and without it many readers never see the code at all. Second most common is size. Divide the reading distance by ten: a code meant to be read from two metres needs about 20 cm of side. Below 2 cm nothing reliable happens at arm's length.
Keep the modules dark on a light ground. Inverted codes, light on dark, fail on plenty of older readers and on cheap warehouse scanners. If you drop a logo into the middle, raise error correction to Q or H so the decoder can rebuild what the logo covers. For print, take the SVG or EPS rather than the PNG: vector scales to a banner without turning the edges to porridge. There is more of this in 10 things to know before printing QR codes.
And the plain limits. A static code cannot be repointed after it leaves the printer, cannot be switched off, and cannot tell you whether anyone scanned it. If the page behind it is deleted, the code leads to a 404 forever.
A static code is a printed fact. It never expires, it depends on no service staying alive, and no one counts the scans. That is exactly right for the sticker on the machine, the book colophon, the plaque on a wall. It is wrong for a campaign poster you may want to redirect in March, or for anything where somebody will eventually ask how many people scanned it. For those, use an editable code from the dynamic URL page, where the destination can be changed later and scans are counted.
One habit worth keeping either way: shorten the link before you encode it. Campaign URLs with utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign attached run to 150 characters and produce a visibly denser code for no benefit on paper. Run it through a shortener first, or point at a clean path on your own domain and handle the tracking server side. The code gets simpler, and simpler codes scan from further away.
No. The web address is stored inside the code itself, so there is no account to lapse and no service in the middle that could shut down. As long as the page at that address stays online, the printed code keeps working. Delete the page and the code will lead to a 404.
Not with a static code. The address is part of the pattern, so changing it means generating a new code and reprinting. If you expect the destination to move, make an editable code on the dynamic URL page instead, where the target can be swapped without touching the print.
There is no limit and no counter. Nobody is metering the code and nothing reports back, because the scan goes straight from the phone to your site. If you need numbers, put the counting on your own side with server logs or analytics, or use an editable code.
Divide the reading distance by ten to get the minimum side length. A code read from 30 cm can be 3 cm across, one read from two metres needs about 20 cm. Under 2 cm most phones give up at arm's length, and a long URL pushes that floor higher.
SVG or EPS. Both are vector, so the printer can scale the code to any size with clean edges. PNG is fine for a website, an email or a label produced at the exact pixel size you chose. The format comparison is covered in the blog.
Usually not, if you keep it small and raise error correction to Q or H. Those levels let a reader reconstruct roughly 25 or 30 percent of the damaged modules. Logos above 3 MB are rejected, and a logo covering more than about a fifth of the code is asking for trouble.
