How much more “data” does a QR code have, compared to a regular “bar code/UPC code”?

Question

I kind of understand how a UPC code works, but how is a QR code capable of “storing more data”?

In: Other

Answer 1

So there’s a few concepts at play.

The first is that a UPC code is a “2D barcode”. That means the data is read left-to-right and nothing about the up-and-down direction has to do with the data. A QR code is a “3D barcode”. That means it uses both directions to encode data.

So a 2D barcode is like one row of pixels on your monitor, and the QR code is like the entire monitor. That alone should tell you QR has the potential to store a TON more data and why.

“How much more does it have” is kind of complicated, so we’ll stick with the simple parts. The most common specification for UPC lets you encode a 12-digit number. The largest possible specification for QR lets you encode a 7,089-digit number. That’s a lot!

In theory we could make both bigger and fit more data in them, but since UPC can only “grow” in one direction, it’ll always have less data than a QR of a similar size.