Free ISBN Barcode Generator: Your ISBN-13 as an EAN-13
Paste your 13-digit ISBN. Check digit calculated. Vector SVG, PDF or PNG, no signup.
12–13 digits. International retail standard.
Customize
Preview
Enter data to see preview
The format picker says EAN-13, not ISBN, because that is the symbology your ISBN is printed as. Twelve more formats sit alongside it on the barcode generator.
Start here
There Is No ISBN Barcode Format
ISBN is a numbering scheme. EAN-13 is a symbology. The barcode on the back of every book is an EAN-13 whose thirteen digits happen to be an ISBN — that is not a shortcut, it is how the standard is written.
What an ISBN is
A number that identifies one edition of one title, issued by a national ISBN agency. It is metadata: a key into a catalogue that holds the title, author, format and price. It is not a picture, and it has no bars of its own.
What EAN-13 is
A thirteen-digit retail symbology — the same one on a tin of beans — with a fixed structure, a fixed check digit rule and quiet-zone requirements published by GS1. It is the thing a bookshop scanner at the till actually reads.
How they meet
The 978 and 979 prefixes were set aside inside EAN-13 for publishing. An ISBN-13 already begins with one of them, so it drops into an EAN-13 whole, with no translation step. The barcode is an EAN-13. Full stop.
This matters practically, not just pedantically. Generators that advertise a separate “ISBN” format have relabelled their EAN-13 encoder, and the relabelling hides the rules you actually need: that the input is thirteen digits and not the hyphenated form you were sent, that a ten-digit ISBN will not encode, and that the small price barcode beside it is a different symbol altogether. QRKIT has no ISBN format in its picker and will not add one. You select EAN-13, paste the digits, and what you get is the barcode the till expects.
Anatomy
What the Thirteen Digits Mean
An ISBN-13 is written with hyphens for humans — 978-3-16-148410-0 — and without them for a scanner. The hyphens mark five parts, and only the first and last are fixed in length.
Prefix
978 or 979
The GS1 prefix that marks the number as a book rather than a grocery item. It is the reason an ISBN fits inside EAN-13 at all: 978 was set aside for publishing, and 979 was opened when 978 filled up.
Registration group
1–5 digits
The country, region or language area the ISBN was issued in. Variable length, which is why an ISBN's hyphens do not fall in the same places from one book to the next.
Registrant
variable
The publisher. A large publisher gets a short registrant number and a long run of titles; a self-publisher with one book gets a long registrant number and very few.
Publication
variable
The specific title and edition. A hardback, a paperback and an ebook of the same book are three different ISBNs, so they are three different barcodes.
Check digit
1 digit
A modulo-10 digit computed from the twelve before it — each digit alternately weighted 1 and 3. Enter twelve digits here and this one is worked out for you.
Type the digits, not the hyphens. The field is numeric and takes thirteen characters, so the hyphenated form will not fit and an interior space is rejected rather than quietly stripped — stripping it would mean accepting data the encoder then refuses. Paste 9783161484100, not 978-3-16-148410-0.
Check digit
Twelve Digits In, Thirteen Digits Out
The thirteenth digit is arithmetic, not information. It is computed from the twelve before it, and the generator handles it in whichever direction you need.
Enter twelve digits
978316148410 → 9783161484100
The check digit is calculated and appended for you, and the full thirteen digits appear in the human-readable line printed under the bars. Useful when you have the number without its final digit, or want to confirm the one you were given.
Enter all thirteen
9783161484100 → verified, then encoded
The last digit is checked against the same calculation rather than trusted. If it does not match, no barcode is drawn — which is the right outcome, because a symbol with a wrong check digit is a symbol that will not scan.
One rough edge, stated honestly. When a thirteen-digit number fails that check the message you see is the generic “Invalid barcode data for this format. Please check your input.” rather than a specific note about the check digit. So if you pasted thirteen digits and got that message, the last digit is the first thing to re-check — a transposed pair earlier in the number will trip it too. Deleting the final digit and letting the tool recompute it is the quickest way to find out which.
Honest limits
Two Things This Generator Will Not Do
Both are common enough to send you elsewhere, so they are here rather than buried in a FAQ.
It does not convert ISBN-10 to ISBN-13
An EAN-13 is thirteen digits by definition, so a ten-digit ISBN cannot be encoded as one. Ten digits are refused at the input, and we do not silently pad or transform them.
The conversion itself is a defined procedure, not a guess: drop the ISBN-10’s check digit, put 978 in front of the remaining nine digits, and recompute the check digit for the new twelve. QRKIT does not perform it. Every ISBN issued since 2007 is already thirteen digits, and your ISBN agency’s record for an older title lists its ISBN-13 form — take the number from there and paste it above.
It does not generate the price add-on
The narrow barcode you often see to the right of a book’s main symbol is an EAN-5 add-on. It is a separate symbol with its own encoding, typically carrying a currency indicator and a price, or the value 90000 that means “no price encoded”.
QRKIT does not produce EAN-5 or EAN-2 add-ons in any format, so what you get here is the main EAN-13 on its own. That is fine for a great many titles — plenty of books carry no add-on at all — but if your distributor’s spec sheet asks for a priced barcode, you need a tool that emits the composite symbol. Better to know now than at proof stage.
Specs
What This Generator Does, Exactly
Including where it stops. A cover goes to press once, so the limits are worth reading before the artwork is locked.
| Property | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Symbology | EAN-13 | There is no ISBN symbology. An ISBN barcode is an EAN-13, and that is what this generator produces. |
| Character set | Digits only | Anything that is not 0–9 is refused. No hyphens, no spaces — an interior space is rejected rather than quietly removed. |
| Accepted length | 12 or 13 digits | Twelve and the check digit is calculated; thirteen and it is verified against the same calculation. |
| ISBN prefix | 978 or 979 | Every ISBN-13 starts with one of the two. The field itself accepts any 12–13 digits, because it is a general EAN-13 field. |
| ISBN-10 input | Not accepted | Ten digits are refused, and QRKIT does not convert ISBN-10 to ISBN-13. Bring the thirteen-digit form. |
| Price add-on | Not generated | The five-digit EAN-5 beside a book barcode is a separate symbol. This tool produces the main EAN-13 only. |
| Human-readable line | On by default | The thirteen digits are printed under the bars, including a check digit the tool calculated. It can be switched off. |
| Quiet zone | 11 modules left, 7 right | The GS1 figures for EAN-13, and deliberately asymmetric. Both margins are drawn into the exported file. |
| Smallest bar we advise | 0.264 mm | GS1 caps retail symbols at 80% magnification, where one module is 0.264 mm. The tool warns below it. |
| Export formats | PNG, SVG, PDF | SVG and PDF are genuine vector. There is no EPS export. |
| Raster resolution | 72, 150, 300 or 600 DPI | Paired with a target print width in mm, inches or pixels. The export ceiling is 10,000 pixels per axis; the width field itself stops at 2,000 mm, 80 in or 20,000 px. |
| Design controls | Bar colour, background, bar width, height, text on/off | That is the whole list. Do not use it to print a light-on-dark barcode — retail scanners want dark bars on white. |
| Batch size | Up to 500 barcodes at once | A browser-memory cap, identical for everyone. Signing in does not raise it, because there is nothing to sign in to. |
| Code type | Static | The digits live in the bars. No redirects, no scan counts, no editing after the cover is printed. |
Also not on the list, and deliberately: we do not issue, register or resell ISBNs, and we do not check yours against any registry — only your national ISBN agency can do either. There is no barcode API, no Excel add-in and no barcode font.
Vector Output, Sized for the Back Cover
Most free ISBN barcode tools hand you a PNG and leave the sizing to you. Cover artwork is laid out at press resolution, and a barcode scaled up from a screen-sized bitmap is where scan failures start.
SVG
Real rectangles written into the file, not a traced bitmap. Places into InDesign, Illustrator, Affinity or Inkscape and scales to any size without softening a bar edge.
Also true vector — the bars are redrawn with the PDF's own drawing primitives rather than embedded as an image, on a page sized to the barcode itself. Ready for a printer's PDF workflow.
PNG
The raster option, at 72, 150, 300 or 600 DPI. Fine for a listing image or a proof; reach for SVG or PDF for anything going to press.
State the width, do not guess it
Enter a target print width in millimetres, inches or pixels and the export is generated at exactly that size, so nothing has to be scaled in another program afterwards. Two ceilings sit behind that field and they behave differently: the field itself refuses anything over 2,000 mm, 80 in or 20,000 px and will not download until you correct the number, while a request that would exceed 10,000 pixels per axis is quietly reduced to fit and the size summary says so.
A bar-width warning that means something
The tool works out how wide one bar will be at your chosen size and warns you below 0.264 mm — the module width at GS1's 80% magnification floor for retail symbols. Shrinking a book barcode to fit a design is the classic way to make it unscannable.
Quiet zones included, and asymmetric
EAN-13 wants eleven clear modules to the left of the symbol and seven to the right. Both are drawn into the exported file. Do not crop them, and do not let cover artwork or a spine fold encroach on them.
Keep it dark on white. The colour controls exist, but a retail scanner reads contrast between bars and background, and it reads red bars poorly because red is close to invisible under a red laser. Black bars on a white panel is what every till in the country is calibrated for. Whatever you choose, print a real sample at final size and scan it before the cover is signed off — QRKIT draws the symbol and exports the file, and does not grade, verify or certify the printed result.
In bulk
A Whole Backlist From One Paste
Open Generate many at once underneath the generator, paste a column of ISBNs or upload a CSV, and take the whole run in one download. No account, no upgrade prompt.
It knows the word ISBN
Upload a CSV with a column headed ISBN and that column is the one encoded — the tool shows you the choice it made and lets you change it, so a title,isbn export does not quietly turn your book titles into barcodes.
Three outputs
A ZIP of PNGs, a ZIP of SVGs, or a single PDF with one barcode per page. Files are numbered in input order, so the archive sorts back the way your catalogue was written.
Nothing fails quietly
Every row runs through the same checks as the single field, check digit included. Rows that fail are listed with their row numbers and left out of the download rather than producing a barcode that will not scan.
About the 500-row cap. It is a browser-memory limit and nothing else — the batch is rendered on your own machine, and 500 barcodes at 300 DPI is already tens of megabytes held in memory. It is the same number for everyone, there is no account or plan that raises it, and when it bites the tool tells you exactly how many rows were left out so you can split the list and run the rest.
Step by step
How to Create an ISBN Barcode
Step 1
Get the 13-digit form
Your ISBN-13 starts 978 or 979. Write it without hyphens. If all you have is a ten-digit ISBN, get its ISBN-13 form from your ISBN agency's record first — we do not convert it.
Step 2
Paste it into EAN-13
The generator above already has EAN-13 selected, because that is what an ISBN barcode is. Paste the digits with no spaces and the symbol is drawn as you type. Twelve digits is enough — the thirteenth is calculated.
Step 3
Set the print size
Give it a target width in mm, inches or pixels, and pick 72–600 DPI for raster output. The tool reports the finished size and warns if one bar falls under 0.264 mm.
Step 4
Download
SVG or PDF for cover artwork, PNG for a listing or a proof. No signup, no account, no watermark, and the barcode is yours to use commercially.
Not publishing to retail? If the barcode is only for your own stock control and the books never cross a till, you do not need an ISBN at all. Code 128 takes letters as well as digits and is the usual choice for internal codes — see the Code 128 generator.
Pricing
Free, and Free in the Way You Meant
Self-publishers get charged for ISBN barcodes constantly, usually by a tool that generates one for free and then wants an account to release the file. Here it means what it says: the generator on this page asks for no account to create a barcode and no account to download it, stamps nothing on the output, and has no paid tier above it.
Included, at no cost
Free forever- EAN-13 encoding of your ISBN-13
- Check digit calculated or verified
- Unlimited barcodes — no daily quota
- PNG, SVG and vector PDF download
- Print width in mm/in/px and 72–600 DPI
- Bulk generation up to 500 at a time
- No signup, no account, no card
- No watermark on any export
- Commercial use allowed
Not available at any price
Be clear about it- No ISBN registration. We do not issue, sell or look up ISBNs. Your national ISBN agency does that.
- No ISBN-10 conversion. Bring the thirteen-digit number.
- No price add-on. The five-digit EAN-5 beside a book barcode is not something this tool generates.
- No dynamic or trackable barcode. Every barcode here is static, so it cannot be edited after printing and its scans cannot be counted.
- No barcode API or integration. No REST endpoint, no Zapier, no plugin, no library.
Want a code readers can actually use? An EAN-13 is for the till; a phone camera does nothing useful with it. A QR code on the same back cover can send a reader to the book’s page, a sample chapter or a review link, and a dynamic one can be repointed after printing and counted. It is a different symbology and a different product, and unlike the barcode tool it involves an account. Learn about dynamic QR codes.
ISBN Barcodes — Frequently Asked Questions
Get started
Generate Your ISBN Barcode
Thirteen digits into the EAN-13 field, check digit handled, exported as vector SVG, PDF or PNG at the size your cover needs. No signup, no watermark.