The international standard barcode for retail products worldwide, encoding 13 digits including country code, manufacturer, product, and check digit.
EAN-13 is the global standard barcode for retail products. If you've ever bought anything from a store, you've seen an EAN-13 barcode. It's the rectangular barcode printed on virtually every consumer product sold outside North America, and it's also widely used within North America alongside UPC-A. The 13-digit code uniquely identifies products and enables instant checkout at point-of-sale systems worldwide.
EAN (European Article Number) was developed in 1977 as a superset of the American UPC system. While UPC was limited to 12 digits, EAN added a 13th digit to accommodate country codes, enabling truly international product identification. The system was created by EAN International (now GS1), a non-profit organization that manages global standards for business communication. Today, EAN-13 is used on over 1 billion products worldwide and is scanned over 6 billion times every day.
| Symbology Type | Linear (1D) |
| Character Set | Numeric only (0-9) |
| Data Capacity | Exactly 13 digits |
| Check Digit | Modulo 10 (mandatory, auto-calculated) |
| Standard Size | 37.29mm × 26.26mm (100% magnification) |
| Magnification Range | 80% to 200% |
| Minimum X-Dimension | 0.264mm at 80% magnification |
| Quiet Zone | 11 modules left, 7 modules right |
The primary use - every retail checkout scanner reads EAN-13 barcodes to identify products and look up prices.
Track stock levels, manage reordering, and conduct inventory counts using the same codes as checkout.
Identify products throughout the supply chain from manufacturer to distributor to retailer.
Books use ISBN-13, which is an EAN-13 barcode with the prefix 978 or 979.
Periodicals use ISSN encoded as EAN-13 with the prefix 977.
You need to join GS1 (gs1.org) to get a company prefix. GS1 membership costs vary by country and company size. Once you have a prefix, you can assign product numbers and generate valid EAN-13 codes. Never buy barcodes from third-party resellers - major retailers won't accept them.
UPC-A is 12 digits while EAN-13 is 13 digits. However, any UPC-A code can be converted to EAN-13 by adding a leading zero. Most modern scanners read both formats. EAN-13 is the international standard, while UPC-A is primarily used in North America.
No. EAN-13 numbers must be assigned through GS1 to ensure global uniqueness. Using made-up numbers can cause serious problems in retail systems and may violate GS1 standards. Major retailers require legitimate GS1-assigned codes.
The first 2-3 digits are the GS1 prefix, which indicates the country where the company is registered with GS1 (not where the product is made). For example, 00-13 = USA/Canada, 30-37 = France, 45-49 = Japan, 50 = UK.
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