Most products need two barcodes: an EAN-13 on the item itself, and an ITF-14 on the outer carton that a warehouse scans. This page makes both, plus EAN-8 for packs too small for a full code.
Item, carton, small pack
| What it goes on | Type | You type | You get |
|---|---|---|---|
| The item on a shop shelf | EAN-13 | 540014128876 |
5400141288766 |
| The carton of those items | ITF-14 | 1540014128876 |
15400141288763 |
| A pack too small for EAN-13 | EAN-8 | 9638507 |
96385074 |
Look at the first two rows: the carton number is the item number with a 1 in front, but it ends in 3, not 6. The extra digit shifts every weight in the check-digit sum, so the carton needs its own check digit. If you copy the item’s last digit onto the carton number, the tool will not draw it: it tells you the correct digit instead.
How the check digit works
From the right, multiply the digits alternately by 3 and 1 and add them up. For 9638507 that is 7×3 + 0 + 5×3 + 8 + 3×3 + 6 + 9×3 = 86. The check digit is what reaches the next multiple of 10: 4. EAN-13, EAN-8, UPC and ITF-14 all use this same rule, which is why a UPC-A like 036000291452 reads as 0036000291452 with an unchanged check digit when a scanner treats it as EAN-13.
Printing on cardboard
ITF-14 is downloaded with its thick frame, the bearer bar, already drawn. Keep it: on corrugated board the frame takes the pressure of the printing plate and stops a scanner from reading half the code as a shorter one. Retail EAN-13 and EAN-8 come with the digits in the standard groups under the bars.
Take the SVG to a printer, since it stays sharp at any size; the PNG, 1200 pixels wide, suits label software and documents.
Where real numbers come from
To sell in shops, the number must be registered to your company with GS1, which in the United States is GS1 US. Any correctly formed number scans, so made-up numbers are fine for a prototype or a test label. On a real product, an unregistered number may already belong to someone else’s product in the shop’s system.