vCard QR Code Generator

About this tool

A vCard QR code is a QR code whose payload is a whole contact card rather than a link. Point a phone camera at it and the operating system recognises the BEGIN:VCARD payload and offers to save the person — name, job title, company, phone numbers, email, website, postal address, birthday and note — straight into the address book. No app, no account, no typing.

This generator builds the vCard itself and encodes it in one step. The card is written as a real RFC 6350 / RFC 2426 vCard: values are escaped (commas, semicolons and backslashes), long lines are folded at 75 octets with CRLF continuations, and phone numbers and emails carry the TYPE labels phones use to tell a mobile from a landline. You pick vCard 3.0 (the dialect scanners handle best) or 4.0.

The result is an SVG, so it stays sharp whether it ends up on a slide, a badge or a printed banner. The exact vCard source is embedded in the SVG's <desc> element and returned by the CLI, so you can copy it into a .vcf file if you want the contact card as a file too.

Worked example

Fill in:

• First name Ada, last name Lovelace
• Company Analytical Engines, job title Chief Analyst
• Mobile +44 7700 900123, email [email protected], website example.com/ada

The encoded vCard is:

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
N:Lovelace;Ada;;;
FN:Ada Lovelace
ORG:Analytical Engines
TITLE:Chief Analyst
TEL;TYPE=CELL:+44 7700 900123
EMAIL;TYPE=INTERNET:[email protected]
URL:https://example.com/ada
END:VCARD

Scanning the generated code on a phone brings up "Add contact" pre-filled with those fields. With Print contact details under the code left on, the same details are also typeset in monospace under the QR, which is what makes it usable as a conference badge or the back of a business card.

Notes on the fields

• At least one of first name, last name or company is required — a vCard with no display name cannot be saved.
• example.com/ada becomes https://example.com/ada; a bare host is what people type, but a scanner needs a scheme to open it.
• Email addresses are checked for a single @ and a dotted domain. Birthdays must be real dates in YYYY-MM-DD form, so 2023-02-29 is rejected rather than silently encoded.
• The five address fields (street, city, state/region, postal code, country) are combined into one ADR property. Fill in only the ones you have.

Limits and edge cases

• Capacity. A QR code holds roughly 2,900 bytes at error correction L and about 1,270 at H. A long note or address plus a high error-correction level can exceed that; the tool then fails with the vCard's byte count instead of producing an unscannable code. Shorten the note or drop to L or M.
• Density vs. print size. More contact detail means more modules, and more modules need a bigger printed code. As a rule of thumb, print at least 20 mm square for a short card and more for a detailed one, and always leave the light quiet-zone margin that is already part of the SVG.
• No photo. A PHOTO property carrying an image makes the payload far too large to scan reliably, so contact photos are not supported.
• Static by design. The contact data lives inside the code. That means it works offline and forever, and it also means the code cannot be edited after printing and cannot count scans — if the details change, generate a new code.
• Output format. This page renders SVG (vector). Colours accept hex values (#000, #000000, #000000ff) or CSS colour names, and transparent is allowed for the background.
• Privacy. The whole thing runs in your browser as WebAssembly. Contact details are never uploaded, and there is no redirect service in the middle.

FAQ