Static vs dynamic QR codes

What each one actually contains

A static QR code holds your content directly. Encode example.com/menu and the pattern literally contains those characters. A scanner reads them out and opens the address. Nothing else is involved.

A dynamic QR code holds a short address belonging to the provider — something like qrs.example/a7Bx9. Scanning it sends the phone to that address first, and their server responds with a redirect to your real destination. Every scan passes through them.

That indirection is not a trick. It is what makes the useful features possible: because they control the redirect, they can point it somewhere new after your code is printed, and they can count every scan on the way through. It is also, unavoidably, a permanent dependency on that company.

Side by side

Where dynamic is genuinely the right answer

This site makes static codes, so treat the following with appropriate skepticism — but there are real cases where a redirect service is the correct engineering choice, and pretending otherwise would be useless to you.

• The destination will definitely change. A seasonal menu, a rotating promotion, a conference agenda that shifts. If you know at print time that the target will move, indirection is the answer.
• You need per-code scan analytics. Comparing response rates between two poster sites, or knowing when scans happen. Landing page analytics can tell you a page was visited, but not which physical code sent someone there — unless you give each code its own URL, which is a static approach to the same problem.
• The code is expensive or impossible to replace. Etched into machinery, embedded in a moulded product, printed on 100,000 units already in a warehouse. Here the ability to redirect is worth real money.
• The URL is very long and the code must be small. A long link makes a dense code. A short redirect keeps it simple. Though a short link on your own domain solves this without the dependency.

Where static is the right answer

• The destination is stable. Your homepage, your booking page, your menu at a fixed address. Nothing to change.
• There is no destination at all. Wi-Fi credentials, contact cards, plain text. There is nothing to redirect to — a dynamic Wi-Fi code makes no sense.
• It has to outlive its supplier. Equipment plates, building signage, published books, archival labeling. A static code works in twenty years because it does not need anything to still be running.
• Scans shouldn’t be logged. Anywhere the fact that someone scanned is itself sensitive — a support helpline, a health resource, a legal notice.
• You don’t want a recurring bill. The honest common case. Most codes point at something that will not move, and paying monthly to keep a redirect alive for them is money for nothing.

Getting both: static codes on your own domain

There is a middle path that most comparisons skip. Encode a static code pointing at a URL you control — yoursite.com/menu — and then redirect that yourself.

You keep the ability to change the destination, because you own the redirect. You get analytics, because it is your server. And the code has no dependency on any third party, because the only company that has to keep existing is yours. The cost is that you need somewhere to host the redirect, which a static host or your existing site handles for free.

For anyone printing codes at scale who wants flexibility, this is usually a better arrangement than renting the redirect from someone else.

“My QR code expired”

This is the phrase that brings most people to a page like this one, and it is worth being precise about, because three different things get the same name.

• The redirect was switched off. A dynamic code whose trial ended or subscription lapsed. The code still scans; the address now returns an error page. This is what “expired” almost always means.
• The destination went away. Any code, static or dynamic, pointing at a page that was deleted or moved. The code is fine and is doing its job perfectly.
• The code is damaged or too small. Not expiry at all — a printing or sizing problem. See the size guide.

A QR code itself has no expiry mechanism. There is no date in the specification and nothing to count down. It is a way of writing characters as a picture, and pictures do not lapse.

Common questions