About Actually Free QR

A QR code generator built around one rule: the code you download keeps working.

Why this exists

Search for a free QR code generator and you will find dozens. Most of them hand you a dynamic code — one that does not contain your destination at all, but a short link pointing at the generator’s own servers. It scans perfectly on the day you make it. Then a trial expires, or a scan quota is hit, or the company pivots, and every flyer, menu, and business card you printed now leads to an upsell page.

People get caught by this constantly, usually after the print run. Actually Free QR was built as the version of that tool which does not have a trapdoor in it.

How it works

The generator runs entirely in your browser. When you type a URL, the encoding happens on your own device and the resulting pattern is drawn to a canvas you download directly. Your content is never transmitted to us, which means we could not hold it hostage or leak it even if we wanted to.

The code that comes out is static: your destination is encoded into the pattern itself. It works offline, it works if this site disappears tomorrow, and it will still work in ten years. There is no watermark, no resolution cap, and no sign-up wall in front of the download button.

The optional part

Sometimes you genuinely want the dynamic kind — usually because you need to re-point a code that is already printed, or because you want to know how many people scanned it. For that you can create an account and generate a tracked short link with a dashboard showing scans by day, device, and country.

It is deliberately opt-in and deliberately separate from the main tool, because it carries the dependency that the main tool exists to avoid. Use it when the trade-off is worth it, not by default.

How it stays free

Advertising. There are ad units on the page, and that is the entire business model. No freemium tier that quietly downgrades your codes, no watermark you pay to remove, no expiring links. If the ads ever stop covering the hosting bill we will say so plainly rather than start charging for something we told you was free.

Privacy stance

We collect as little as the feature set allows. Basic generation involves no data collection at all. Signing in and creating tracked links necessarily involves storing some data, and the Privacy Policy spells out exactly what, including the parts — like logging IP addresses on scans — that other sites tend to bury.

Get in touch

Bug reports, feature requests, and complaints are all welcome on the contact page.