Free QR code generator for restaurant menus

How to make a QR code for your menu

• Paste your menu link — a website page, a PDF, an online-ordering page, anything with a URL.
• Pick your colours. Keep the code darker than its background; the contrast meter tells you when you are safe.
• Add a frame if the code will sit on a table. A 'Scan me' caption measurably lifts scans, because it tells guests the square is for them.
• Drop in your logo if you want one. We punch a protected hole in the middle and raise error correction to the highest level automatically.
• Download SVG for anything you print, PNG for anything on a screen.

PNG or SVG — which download do you want?

SVG is vector: it is resolution-independent, so the same file is crisp on a business card and on a shop window, and print shops prefer it. PNG is a fixed-size image, fine for a screen, a slide, an email signature or a social post, and ours comes out at 2048 px so it survives being scaled up a bit. Rule of thumb: if it goes to a printer, send the SVG.

The honest bit: a static code points at one fixed address

This tool makes a static QR code. The address you typed is encoded directly into the pattern, which means the printed square lasts exactly as long as that address does. Change the page, rename the file, move to a new domain, let the PDF link rot — and every code you printed points at nothing. This is not a flaw in the generator; it is what a static code is, and every free generator produces one.

What a permanent code does instead

A yourmenu.app code encodes a permanent short link rather than the menu address. The link is the constant; where it resolves to is a setting you control. Rename the menu at eleven at night, redesign it next spring, move it to your own domain a year from now — the laminated code on table nine keeps working, because the code was never the address in the first place. One print run instead of a print run every time something changes. That, plus the menu itself, is free for one menu.

Design rules that keep a code scannable

• Contrast: dark modules on a light background, and keep them far apart in lightness. Below about 3:1 the code stops being reliable in dim rooms — and dinner service is a dim room.
• Do not invert it. A light code on a dark background is valid by the spec and unreliable in practice, because plenty of scanners never try the inversion.
• Leave the quiet zone alone. The blank margin around the pattern is part of the code; text or a border crowding it costs you scans. Our downloads include it.
• Keep the logo small. Under about 20% of the width is comfortable; past 25% you are destroying more data than even the highest error correction can rebuild.
• Print it big enough. Roughly 2 cm × 2 cm on a table tent, 3–4 cm on a window at arm's length, more the further away the reader stands.
• Test with a real phone, in your actual lighting, before a print run. Every time.

Where to put the code once it is printed

Table tents and table stickers do most of the work in table service, because the code is in front of the guest at the moment they decide. A window or A-board code sells to people still on the pavement. A code on the bill folder is a quiet way to collect a review or a follow. Counter service is different: a queue of eleven people should be reading a board, not each scanning a square.

What this free tool does not do

It does not track scans, it cannot change where a printed code points, and it does not build the menu behind the link — those need an account, and two of the three are free. It also does not need your email: the download button works immediately, and nothing here is gated. If a generator asks for an address before it hands over a PNG, that PNG is the bait.