What “free” actually means here
Most QR code sites are not free in the way you would hope. They generate the image on a server, slip in a tracking pixel, lock SVG export behind a paywall, or quietly turn old codes off if you stop paying. QRZen is built the other way around: the generator on this page runs entirely in your browser, the download is the finished artifact, and there is no account standing between you and the file.
That means you can paste a link, hit Download, and walk away. The PNG or SVG file is yours. No watermark in the corner, no domain stamped underneath, no login prompt before the download starts. You can use it on a flyer, a t-shirt, a wedding invitation, a product label, or a slide deck for work — including commercial use, without attribution.
Why these codes never expire
A QR code is just a pattern that encodes some text — usually a URL. When the code on this page is generated, your link is written directly into the black and white squares of the image. There is no redirect, no short URL in the middle, and nothing on our servers that has to stay online for the code to keep working. As long as the destination URL itself is alive, the code will scan. Five years from now, ten years from now, with QRZen long gone or not, the file you downloaded will still resolve.
That permanence is the right default for most printed material. Business cards, packaging, museum signage, gravestones, instruction manuals — anything you do not plan to reissue annually — should use a static code. The trade-off is that you cannot change where the code points once it is printed. If that matters, you want a dynamic QR code instead.
PNG or SVG — which to pick
Download the SVG if the code will live in a design tool. SVG is vector, so it scales from a business card to a billboard without ever pixelating. Open it in Figma, Illustrator, Affinity, or InDesign, drop it into your layout, and recolor or resize it freely. Use PNG when you want a quick raster image for the web, an email signature, a Google Slide, or a Notion page. Both formats encode the same link and scan identically.
Make it scan reliably
Two small habits make printed codes much more reliable. First, give the code a quiet zone — a margin of white space at least as wide as four QR modules around the pattern. Decorations that crowd the code can throw off scanners in poor lighting. Second, do not shrink the code below about 2 cm (0.8 in) on its longest side for hand-held scanning, or 10% of the viewing distance for signage. The codes here are exported with sensible defaults; print at 100% scale and you will be fine.