Guides

Five questions we keep being asked, answered with numbers from the tool rather than from memory.

What size does an EAN-13 have to be?

At 100 percent an EAN-13 measures 37.29 by 26.26 millimetres including quiet zones. Anything from 80 to 200 percent of that is allowed.

An EAN-13 needs at least 29.83 millimetres of width. The table shows how much room is left for a motif on 11 common formats.

Usually one of four causes: quiet zones, contrast, altered bar widths or a wrong check digit.

A motif may only act above the scan band and must never change a bar width. That is what keeps the code readable.

For retail, yes. For internal use such as stock or inventory a number of your own is enough.