A QR Code Does Not Expire. The Service Behind It Might.

A printed QR code has no battery, subscription, or hidden expiration date. If the pattern is still readable, a phone can scan it.

But the scan has to lead somewhere.

That destination may depend on a hosted page, a redirect, a domain, an account, and an organization that has to keep the whole chain running. The printed square may last twenty years. The service behind it is the part worth investigating.

I audited 14 digital business card services

I kept seeing words such as free forever, permanent, and never expires. They sound reassuring, but they do not always describe the same thing.

So I reviewed the official product pages, pricing pages, help centers, and terms of fourteen digital business card and related QR services. For each service, I recorded practical questions:

• Can an individual create a usable card without paying?


• How many cards are included?


• Does the recipient need an app?


• Can details change after the QR code is printed?


• Is there an explicit permanence claim?


• Are scans, analytics, branding, or team features limited?

The result is now a public, versioned dataset:

• GitHub repository


• Permanent Zenodo archive and DOI


• Machine-readable data

The main finding: “free” is not a product specification

A free plan may contain one card, two cards, or four. One provider may cap scans; another may limit analytics; another may reserve team controls for paying users.

None of that is automatically unreasonable. The problem begins when the useful limit is hidden behind a comforting headline.

“Permanent” varies just as much. Some vendors explicitly say that the card or dynamic QR code never expires. Others explain that details remain editable without making a comparable promise about the hosted service itself.

In the dataset, not found remains not found. I did not turn missing evidence into a yes or a no simply to complete a table. When two official pages contradicted each other, I kept both claims.

The questions I would ask before printing 500 cards

Before committing a hosted QR address to paper, I would ask:

1. Is the destination address assigned for the long term?


2. Can the content change without changing the printed pattern?


3. What happens if the subscription ends?


4. Are additional cards deleted or only paused?


5. Is there a scan cap?


6. Can the QR and contact data be exported?


7. Who legally operates the service?

A public operator, legal address, privacy policy, and correction process do not make a service immortal. They do make the promise more accountable.

Full disclosure: I built GetQRcard

I am not a detached reviewer. I founded GetQRcard, and it appears in the comparison. GetQRcard and its French access point MaCarteQR are published by Le Chemin Numérique ASBL, a Belgian nonprofit based in Liège.

That relationship is disclosed in the README, the dataset, the project profile, the articles, and the Zenodo record. The same field definitions are applied to every service, and every vendor can request a documented correction.

GetQRcard offers one editable personal card with a permanent QR address free of charge and without advertising. Recipients open it in a browser and save the vCard without installing an app. The €15 annual plan is aimed at people and organizations that need unlimited cards, bulk creation, hosted documents, or a longer day-by-day analytics chart.

One correction already improved the dataset. The initial copy described “30 days of scan history” too broadly. The implementation actually keeps scan totals and device/country breakdowns from the beginning in both plans. Only the daily chart is limited: 30 days for the free plan and 90 days for the annual plan. That correction is documented in release v1.0.1.

Why publish the evidence?

I did not want to end with “the best digital business card is…” That conclusion would age quickly and depend too much on each person’s needs.

Publishing the evidence is more useful. The repository includes the data, methodology, sources, conflict-of-interest disclosure, correction procedure, media copy, and long-form articles in English and French. It is released under CC BY 4.0 and archived by Zenodo.

If you operate one of the services, find an error, or think an important field is missing, open an issue or submit a documented correction. Brutal, factual feedback is welcome.

A permanence claim should be precise enough for somebody else to verify. That is what this project is trying to make possible.