The best QR code generator for weddings

What is the best QR code generator for a wedding?

If you need one to three codes and want to spend nothing, Hovercode’s free plan is the honest answer. Three dynamic codes, their own FAQ says they never expire, unlimited scans, no card. For a wedding that is often the whole requirement.

If you want more codes than that, or you would rather the code’s survival not depend on what order you created things in, Graklink is a one-time $7.99 per code with no scan ceiling and nothing to renew.

We sell the second one. We are still going to tell you about the first one, because a wedding is not a good moment to be sold something you do not need.

What does a wedding actually need from a QR code?

Not much, and that is the point. Weddings are an unusual case, and most QR advice is written for businesses.

• Very few codes. One on the invitation for your wedding site or RSVP form. Often a second for the registry. Sometimes a third at the reception for a shared photo album. Three is a lot.
• Modest but bursty scans. A hundred and fifty guests scanning a couple of times each is a few hundred scans, mostly clustered in the week the invitations land and the week of the wedding.
• A long tail nobody plans for. Invitations get kept. People scan them years later out of curiosity, and a keepsake that leads to an error page is a small sad thing.
• The destination changes more than you expect. The RSVP form closes. The registry gets picked over. The site you built comes down. After the wedding the useful destination is a photo gallery or a thank-you note, not an RSVP form.

That last one is why a dynamic code is worth it for a wedding at all. The code on the invitation should be able to become the photo album afterwards.

How do the main options compare?

Prices are US dollars, verified 24 July 2026 unless noted.

	Free plan	Cost if you pay	What happens if you stop paying
Graklink	Unlimited static, free forever	$7.99 once per dynamic code	Nothing. There is no plan on the code to stop
Hovercode	3 dynamic codes, unlimited scans, never expire	$120/yr (Pro, 100 codes)	Your first 3 codes stay active. Codes beyond them go inactive
QRCodeChimp	10 dynamic codes, 1,000 scans/mo shared	$83.88/yr (Starter, 50 codes)	Drops to free: codes past the last 10 pause, and the 1,000/mo cap applies again
QR Tiger	3 dynamic codes	$84/yr (12 codes)	Codes stop when the subscription lapses
Bitly	Limited	$120/yr (Core, 5 QR codes)	Plain bitly codes keep redirecting; branded and custom-domain codes break

QR Tiger and Bitly figures verified live 20 July 2026 in our last freshness audit and unchanged since.

Is a free plan enough for a wedding?

Often, genuinely, yes. Here is how to tell which free plan fits.

Hovercode’s free tier is the strongest fit for a typical wedding, and we would rather say that than pretend otherwise. Three dynamic codes covers invitation, registry, and photos exactly. Scans are unlimited, so a popular wedding cannot run you into a ceiling. Their FAQ is unambiguous: “Your first 3 QR codes will never expire, regardless of when you create them.”

One thing to know about it before you rely on it. Read that sentence again: it is your first three, by creation order, not three of your choosing. If you make a few codes experimenting, then create your real invitation code fourth, that fourth code is the one that goes inactive if you ever subscribe and then cancel. Make your important codes first, or delete the practice ones.

QRCodeChimp’s free tier gives you more codes, ten, but caps scans at 1,000 a month shared across all of them. For most weddings that is fine. It gets tight if you have several codes and a big guest list, because one busy code spends the allowance and pauses the others with it.

A free static code from anywhere, including ours, is the most durable option that exists, with one hard condition: the destination can never change. If you are pointing at a wedding site on a domain you own and intend to keep, a static code will outlive every service on this page. If you are pointing at a registry link or an RSVP form, it will not survive the year.

What if you design your invitations in Canva?

Then there is a useful thing worth knowing: the “Dynamic QR Codes” app in Canva’s app marketplace is built by Hovercode, not by Canva. It is free with any Canva plan, and the codes it makes are Hovercode codes, with Hovercode’s rules. So if you liked the free plan above, you can use it without leaving your invitation design.

That is verified from Canva’s own listing for the app. Canva’s separate built-in QR tool is a different thing with different behavior, and we are not going to characterize it here until we have checked it properly.

Will the code still work on your anniversary?

This is the question the category is bad at answering, so here is the plain version.

A static code will still decode in twenty years, guaranteed, because there is no service in the middle to fail. Whether it still works depends entirely on whether the URL inside it still resolves, and you cannot change that URL. Most wedding sites do not survive a decade.

A dynamic code will keep working for exactly as long as somebody keeps the redirect running. On a subscription that means as long as you keep paying, which is a strange thing to sign up for on a keepsake. On Hovercode’s free tier, for your first three codes, they say indefinitely and at no cost. On Graklink it is a one-time $7.99 and the code never stops redirecting for a billing reason. Only two things can ever stop one: an acceptable-use violation like phishing or fraud, or you deleting your own account.

For a thing people keep in a box, that distinction is most of the decision.

What does it cost?

For a realistic wedding with three codes, held for five years:

	Five-year total
Hovercode free (3 codes)	$0
Graklink (3 codes at $7.99)	$23.97
QRCodeChimp free (within the scan cap)	$0
QRCodeChimp Starter	$419.40
QR Tiger	$420
Bitly Core	$600

The free options are real options and the top of that table is not a typo. If three codes and unlimited scans covers you, take it.

Where the $23.97 earns its place: you want more than three codes, you do not want the durability to depend on creation order, you want the code to keep working without an account you have to remember to keep alive, or you simply want the whole thing settled in one payment and never thought about again. For a lot of couples that last reason is enough on its own.

Start with a free static code if the destination is permanent, or a $7.99 dynamic code if it needs to become the photo album later. Our wedding use-case page covers where to put the code and how to make it scan off a printed invitation, and the gift registry page covers the one-code-many-registries setup.