How does it work?

This tool allows you to check the validity of a UPC code and detect its GS1 prefix for free. The validation is performed by checking the UPC syntax and verifying the check digit.

With the bulk check mode, you can upload a XLS/XLSX file with multiple UPC codes and instantly validate them all at once.

Does a valid UPC code guarantee that a product is legit?

No, a valid UPC code alone does not guarantee that a product is legitimate. In fact, counterfeiters can just use the real UPC codes of existing products for their fake products. It is important to buy from reputable retailers and manufacturers to ensure that you are purchasing authentic products.

Some manufacturers use security features when printing the barcodes so that, just like banknotes, they are difficult to counterfeit. But without knowing what to look for, consumers are unable to verify the authenticity of the product.

Can I find out the origin of a product by its barcode?

No, you cannot determine the origin of a product from its barcode. A UPC code does not contain information about where the product was manufactured. Although the GS1 prefix, or the first digits of the UPC code, may indicate the territory of the GS1 member organization that licensed the code, this territory may not correspond to the country where the product was produced. You can find the GS1 prefix list here.

How to get product information by UPC code?

You might want to know how to check barcodes and how to get the product information associated with a UPC code, manufacturer details, or other specifics such as product images for purposes like inventory management, market analysis, price comparison or competitor research. Or you just want to check the UPC of your brand new Nike shoes. Below are the best methods to get product information by UPC code for free:

• UPC Code Databases: you can use the GS1 Database, which is free for simple lookups and an official source of information about manufacturers using a specific UPC code. Despite this, it is not the most extensive database in relation to product information. Other free databases include barcodelookup.com, go-upc.com, upcindex.com, buycott.com and ean-search.org. These databases claim to have hundreds of millions of UPC codes and offer a free UPC lookup tool for single searches. However, be aware that the information may not always be accurate or up-to-date, especially when it was crowdsourced or scraped from other websites. Check our UPC database benchmarking below to compare the results of our independent test of these databases and their performance reviews.

• Google Search: to look up one or a few UPC codes, simply enter the UPC code into Google search. If there are matches, you'll see results from retailers like eBay and Walmart, as well as product databases. To filter results by a specific site, use the site: operator followed by the domain name (e.g., 'site:ebay.com 195925685019').

• UPC Code Lookup APIs: for Excel/Google Sheets users and developers, APIs can automate the process of looking up UPC codes and retrieving product information. This method is ideal for bulk and real-time lookups. Specialized APIs like upcitemdb.com and upcdatabase.org offer free plans with limited requests, suitable for small businesses who need to check UPC codes. You can even use several APIs in combination to get a larger daily free quota. Strategies like result caching can further reduce costs. However, APIs may not always have the most up-to-date information and can be expensive. And like databases, they may also be inaccurate depending on the source of the data, which can include scraping or public contributions. Be sure to test them thoroughly before committing to a paid plan. Check our UPC database benchmarking below to compare the results of our independent test of these lookup APIs.

• Retailer APIs: for a reliable and cost-effective alternative to specialized APIs, use retailer APIs like eBay (which allows UPC searches using the item_summary endpoint's search method) or Walmart (using the getSearchResult method). This makes most sense if you are looking for product information of items that are likely to be sold on these platforms, usually well-known brands such as Nike, Adidas, Apple, Samsung, Coca-Cola, etc.

• Web Scraping: developers can use web scraping techniques to extract product information from e.g. e-commerce websites. This method can be extremely cost-effective (or even free) to run at scale, but requires advanced programming skills and may be against the terms of service of the website being scraped. As an example, check this guide for a walkthrough on how to scrape eBay product information using Python.

How to get food nutrition data by UPC code?

If you're a food retailer or developer of a nutrition app, you might not only need product brands and descriptions, but also nutritional information like ingredients, calories, etc.

An excellent free API to get this data for free is the FoodData Central API from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the purpose of which, according to them, is "to assist application developers wishing to incorporate nutrient data into their applications or websites". It can be used for commercial purposes and also provides very generous rate limits (at the time of writing, 1,000 requests per hour on default but with the possibility to request more).

An alternative is the crowdsourced Open Food Facts database, which is free and open-source. They offer a free API as well as the possibility to download the UPC database, which can be used to get all the data in their database at once. This is useful if you're planning to build a nutrition app or a database of your own and want to use their data as a starting point.

Finally, other commercial APIs like go-upc.com also provide nutritional information, however they're not free.

What's the best UPC database for barcode lookup in 2024?

To determine which is the best barcode database from where to get product information and images, in August 2024 an independent test was conducted with a sample of UPC codes from different product categories and manufacturer countries. The UPCs were chosen to be a mix of common and less common products, including some that are not likely to be sold on online marketplaces. Some of the most popular databases were used for the benchmarking, using their free UPC code lookup. Here are the results:

Even though the test was performed with a small sample size (so performance may differ in other scenarios), the following can be concluded:

• Matches

  16/16

  Go-UPC.com: the winner of the test. It had an impressive 100% match rate and also provided the most accurate product information, even for the most obscure products in the sample, which were included in the test to challenge the databases. Plus, it also returns ingredients information for food and beverage products. This database is likely to be sourcing information from a combination of sources which go beyond merely scraping online marketplaces, which explains the quality of the information provided.

  Go to Go-UPC.com

• Matches

  15/16

  Digit-Eyes.com: the runner-up. Excellent match rate as they source their information from a large number of international online retailers (source is disclosed in the results). The downside of this is that, at least when performing a free lookup, it tends to return the product description in languages other than English (e.g. UPC 689228293656), while other databases are more consistent. On the other hand, the product related metadata provided tends to be comprehensive and in the case of food and drinks, it may include nutritional information.

  Go to Digit-Eyes.com

• Matches

  13/16

  BarcodeLookup.com: very good match rate. The accuracy of the product information is very good, but in some cases the information provided was generic (5056225900088), had an incorrect word order (4002051684617) or included words in languages other than the expected (5056225900088, 9780552149518, 3145891623079). These issues are likely to happen because some information is being scraped from online marketplaces such as eBay.

  Go to BarcodeLookup.com

• Matches

  12/16

  EAN-Search.org: good match rate. From the product information returned, it's clear that the database is sourcing information from online marketplaces, but apparently also from online retailers, making the results be of varying quality, depending on the source. Nonetheless, all the information provided was accurate.

  Go to EAN-Search.org

• Matches

  10/16

  UpcIndex.com: provided good results, although failing to return a match for some of the products, especially for the most obscure ones in the test. One big minus of this database is that it returned a false positive, providing completely wrong information for the UPC code 3145891623079.

  Go to UpcIndex.com

• Matches

  8/16

  Buycott.com: with an average match rate of 50% the information provided is fairly accurate, but it's obvious that it was mostly, if not completely, sourced from scraped online marketplaces, as the information is sometimes too generic (7896041103021, 043100760108), contains words in languages other than the expected (9780552149518) or contains non-product related information (3145891623079). The dependency on marketplaces for information also leads to the database not being able to provide information for some products which aren't likely to be sold on online marketplaces.

  Go to Buycott.com

• Matches

  7/16

  UPCItemDB.com: underperformed but provided accurate information when a match was found, although missing some product specifications (e.g. 043100760108, 689228293656). Some matches (4002051684617) are likely to have been sourced from online marketplaces.

  Go to UPCItemDB.com

• Matches

  4/16

  BarcodeSpider.com: disappointing performance, with a low match rate. Provided fairly accurate information when it did return a match.

  Go to BarcodeSpider.com

• Matches

  4/16

  SearchUPC.com: completely free, including their API. They fetch the information from online retailers (including Walmart) and disclose the source in the results. In some cases multiple unrelated matching products were found (689228293656).

  Go to SearchUPC.com

• Matches

  2/16

  GS1: while the GS1 database is the most reliable and comprehensive source for obtaining information of the company holding a specific UPC code, it failed to provide product details for most of the tested UPC codes. The cause might be that product details must be submitted to the GS1 database by the manufacturer on an optional basis and many appear not to be doing so. But if there's a match, the information is the most accurate, as it comes directly from the manufacturer.

  Go to GS1

• Matches

  2/16

  Brocade.io: small database but completely free, including their API. The match rate was very low, but the information provided was accurate when a match was found. Because it is free, it is a good choice as fallback database when combined with others.

  Go to Brocade.io

• Matches

  1/16

  UPCDatabase.org: worst performance of all, even with common products, probably because of the small size of their database. The only match found (5056225900088) returned generic information, which isn't useful. Not worth using.

  Go to UPCDatabase.org

Disclaimer: This is an independent test and this website is not affiliated with any of the mentioned databases, neither has received any compensation or incentive to promote them or provide biased results or reviews.

What to consider when choosing a UPC database

When choosing a UPC database for your business or project, consider the following factors:

• Match rate: first of all, it is essential that the database you choose has a high match rate, meaning that it can find the product information for most of the UPC codes you search for. If you're planning to use the database for a specific product category, test it to make sure it has a good match rate for that category, as the performance may vary between categories. As a rule of thumb, however, the larger the number of products in the database, the higher the potential match rate.

• Accuracy: the information provided by the database should be accurate and up-to-date. A high match rate is not useful if the information returned is incorrect. The best way to verify the accuracy of a database is to test it with a sample of UPC codes for which you already know the product information (you can use any products at your disposal for that, like the ones in your kitchen or office).

• Completeness of the results: some databases might return only the product name and category, while others provide additional information such as images, descriptions, brand name, manufacturer details, nutritional information (in the case of food products), etc. Choose a database that provides the level of detail you need: e.g. if you want to develop a nutrition app, you should only consider databases that provide nutritional information; if you merely want to find out which product a UPC code corresponds to, any database should suffice.

• Features: depending on your needs, you might need a database which returns the data as XML or CSV. Or maybe JSON is enough for you. Some databases offer bulk lookups, while others will force you to search for each UPC code individually, limiting the number of requests during a certain period. Some will provide immediate results, while others might require you to wait for a few minutes or hours. Before committing to a paid plan, make sure the database has the features you need.

• Cost: after considering the above factors, you should choose a database that fits your budget. Some databases offer a free daily quota, while others are paid from the start. The price, which is usually a monthly subscription, generally depends on the number of requests you need to make during a month. A good method for comparing the cost of different databases is to calculate the cost per request, which is the monthly fee divided by the number of requests allowed (e.g. $100/month for 10,000 requests = $0.01/request). Make sure to check whether requests that return no results are counted towards your quota.

How to save money on UPC database API lookups?

UPC database APIs can be expensive, so here are some strategies which can help you save money when using them:

• Prevalidate codes using check digit: use the tool in this page to prevalidate the UPC codes before looking them up in the database. This way, you can avoid making requests for invalid codes, which might count towards your quota.

• Combine multiple APIs with free tiers: use multiple APIs in combination to increase your daily free quota. For example, if API A offers 100 free requests per day and API B offers 200 free requests per day, you can use both to get 300 free requests per day. Keep track of how many requests you have left for each API to avoid exceeding the limit and to redirect the requests to the next API once you reach the limit.

• Cache results: instead of making a request to the API every time you need product information for a UPC code, cache the results in a database of yours, for future requests. Generally, the information for a UPC code should change very rarely, so you can safely cache the results for a reasonable time period. As storing such data at scale might come at a greater cost than the API, this strategy works best when a small number of UPC codes are queried frequently. If you have advanced skills, you can even implement a LRU (least recently used) cache to automatically remove the least used entries from the cache when it reaches a certain size, thus limiting the storage costs.

• Use the trial period: some APIs offer a trial period for free. This trial is usually limited to a certain number of requests or a certain time, whatever comes first (e.g. 500 requests or 7 days). So make sure to make the most of the trial period by exhausting the free quota before the trial ends. This strategy is ideal if you have a one-time need for a number of UPC code lookups.

• Deferred lookups: ideal for use cases where the data is not needed in real time. An example would be when you have a list of 1,000 UPC codes and you want to get the product information for all of them, but you can wait a few days or weeks to get the results. In this case, use an API with a free tier (or combine several of them) to make the queries at a rate that fits within the free quota. So, if you use an API with a daily free quota of 100 requests, you could make 100 requests per day for 10 days to get the information for all 1,000 UPC codes.

• Use a robot: if you have advanced programming skills, you can create a robot that scrapes the data from the website of the database (e.g. using the single search tool, which is usually free). Be aware that this method will most likely be against the terms of service of the website (it is your exclusive responsibility to check this) and will also get you blocked if you make a significant number of requests. Using rotating proxies can help you avoid being detected/blocked, but it will also increase the costs, so that in the end it might be cheaper to use the API.