Guides

Static and dynamic QR codes

The pattern is the same kind of barcode either way. The difference is the text inside it. A static code contains your URL, your WiFi password, or your vCard. A dynamic code contains a short link that belongs to someone else, who then forwards the scan.

Updated 28 October 2026

One poster, two payloads

Suppose the spring menu lives at https://example.com/spring-menu and you want that address on a poster.

A static code encodes https://example.com/spring-menu. A phone that scans it opens that address directly. If you edit the page at that address, the poster still works, because the poster never pointed anywhere else. If you need a different address entirely, you reprint, or you put a redirect on your own domain. QRazyQR makes this kind of code. The URL tab writes whatever you typed, and nothing more.

A dynamic code encodes something like https://qr.vendor.example/x7k2. The vendor’s server logs the scan — time, rough location, device — and redirects the phone to your menu. Next week you can point x7k2 at a new URL without reprinting. You can also lose the poster if the vendor disables the link, raises the price, or shuts down. The thing on the wall is an advertisement for the vendor’s domain. The menu is one hop further, and the hop is rented.

QRazyQR does not make dynamic codes. A redirect we operated would have to be stored on a server. We would see the destination, and we would be in a position to count scans. The reason this site exists is that the payload stays on your device. The about page describes that limit on purpose. It is not a missing feature we forgot to bill for.

What “never expires” actually means

A static symbol has no timer. There is no account to lapse and no scan counter to hit a ceiling. Anyone with a camera can read it as many times as they like, including years from now, including after qrazyqr.com is gone. That is the sense in which the codes from this site do not expire.

The thing the code points at can still disappear. A URL can 404. A phone number can be reassigned. A WiFi password encoded last spring is wrong the day you change the router. “No expiry” is a claim about the symbol, not a promise that the world behind it stays still. When a marketing page says a dynamic code “never expires” but the redirect is part of a subscription, read the cancellation terms. The ink does not expire. The service that answers the short link might.

There is also no privacy in a secret that you print. A static WiFi code can be scanned by anyone who can see it, and the image can be decoded by software that never joins the network. Do not put a password you care about on a poster. Use a guest network, and read the WiFi guide before you laminate anything.

How to tell them apart

Scan the code and read the preview before you tap it. If the domain is yours, you are looking at a static code, or at a redirect you operate yourself. If the domain belongs to a QR company you do not recognize, you are looking at a dynamic code, and the real destination is whatever they choose to serve today. That preview is also your main defense against quishing. A code on a parking meter that wants you to visit a domain you have never heard of is not a menu.

You can do the same check on a code you just made here. The preview should match the tab you used: your URL, the WIFI: record, the mailto: link, the tel: link, or the vCard text. If it shows a qrazyqr.com address, that is because you left the sample URL in the box. Replace it. We do not wrap your destination in a link of ours.

When a redirect is a reasonable product

A shop window poster for an offer that changes every week is a fair use of a dynamic code, if you accept the dependency and the scan log. So is a magazine ad whose destination you cannot know on the print deadline. Use a company that says, in ordinary language, that the code is a short link and that the link stops working when you stop paying. Be suspicious of a free tier that watermarks the image, caps the scans, and then describes the upgrade as “making it a real QR code.” It was a real QR code the whole time. The upgrade is a redirect.

You can get most of the editing benefit without renting the symbol. Encode a stable URL on your own domain, https://example.com/now, and change what that page does. The QR code stays static. The page is yours. Reprinting is only required when the URL itself must change.

When static is the right default

• WiFi, phone, email, and vCard. These are not web pages. A redirect adds nothing but a company in the middle of a password or a contact. The data is short. Put it in the symbol.
• A homepage or a PDF you host. If you control the URL, you control the content. The code can be boring and permanent.
• Anything you would be unhappy to lose. Packaging that ships for years, a plaque, a book. Do not point a plaque at a startup’s short link.

The generator’s error-correction menu and color pickers apply to either kind of payload, but they do not turn a static code into a tracked one. There is no toggle for analytics, because there is nowhere for the analytics to land. If a guide, a print proof, or a scanner disagrees with what you see in the preview, the preview wins — that text is the code. Questions about a specific symbol can go to contact@qrazyqr.com. Include the phone you scanned with, not a live password.