QR codes are free. Forever.

The QR code was born in 1994 at Denso Wave, a Toyota subsidiary. Masahiro Hara and his team created it to track car parts on the production line: they needed something that held more data than a barcode and read fast, from any angle.

Then they did something the software industry still hasn't fully processed: they waived their patent rights. The spec was published, the standard opened up, and today it's ISO/IEC 18004. Anyone can generate and read QR codes. No license, no royalties, no asking anyone for permission.

Generating a QR costs nothing

A QR is not a service. It's arithmetic. Take your bytes, encode them into a grid of black and white modules, add Reed-Solomon error correction, draw the result. On any CPU from the last twenty years, that takes microseconds.

There is no "QR server". There is no per-code cost. Nothing scales with usage. You can generate a million QR codes on a ten-year-old laptop, offline, with an open source library.

How it works, in 40 seconds

A QR is a matrix of modules: version 1 is 21×21, and each version adds 4 modules per side up to version 40, at 177×177. Three elements do the trick:

• The corner squares (finder patterns): tell the reader where the code is and at what angle. That's why you can scan it rotated, tilted or in perspective.
• Reed-Solomon error correction: data is stored with redundancy. At the highest level, the code still reads with up to 30% of it damaged or covered. That's why brands can stamp their logo in the middle.
• The mask: before being drawn, the grid goes through an XOR with a mask pattern to avoid large single-color blocks that would confuse the reader.

Everything else is data in a zigzag: encoding mode, length, and your content. A URL fits easily in the small versions.

So why do they charge for it?

Look at any marketing or link SaaS: QR codes sit behind the premium plan. "Custom QR codes from so many dollars a month." They charge a monthly subscription to run a function from an open source library over an open standard with waived patents.

It's like charging you for addition. The outrage is legitimate: they're not selling technology, they're selling access to something that was already yours.

In Link, it's included

Every short link you create in Link comes with its QR code, in two formats:

• SVG: vector, scales infinitely without pixelating. For print, storefronts, packaging.
• PNG: ready to drop into a deck, a PDF or a sticker.

No premium plan. No download limit. No watermark. Forever — because it was never ours to charge for.

Link is open source: self-host for $0, or cloud at cost with zero margin. QR codes are the cheapest part of the entire system. Charging for them would be ridiculous. So we don't.