Instagram can show a QR code for your profile inside the app, but a screenshot of your phone is not much use to a print shop. This page makes the same kind of code as a file: a 1024 px PNG for screens or an SVG for anything printed, in your own colors.
Username, @handle or link
Any of the three works. @yourname, yourname and a profile link copied from the app’s share menu all end up as the same thing inside the code, https://www.instagram.com/yourname/. When you paste a link, the tool keeps only the username and leaves out everything after it, such as the tracking parameters share links tend to carry. Characters that cannot appear in an Instagram username, anything other than letters, digits, periods and underscores, are removed without a warning, and a typo in the name itself goes straight into the code. Look at “Text inside the code” once before you download.
What a scan opens
A normal web link to your profile. Phones with Instagram installed usually hand that link to the app; others open the profile in the browser. Because it is an ordinary link, it keeps working until the username changes or the account is gone.
Profile codes make sense where people already think “who made this?”: a shop window, a product’s packaging, a market stall, the last slide of a talk, a flyer at an event. A line such as “Follow us on Instagram” next to the code tells people where it leads before they lift the phone.
Brand colors without losing scans
The Instagram look, a bright gradient, is the wrong background for a code: scanners want a dark code on a plain light background. Keep the brand in the frame around the code, or color the code itself in a dark shade of your brand color. Your logo can go in the middle, as on the QR code with logo page. The generator warns you when the colors are too close or the code is lighter than its background.