Why this site exists
Every year, billions of tickets move through venues, stations and airports. Almost all of them carry a barcode of some kind, yet the useful, accurate information about how those codes work is scattered across standards documents, vendor PDFs, and support forum threads written a decade ago.
We wrote this reference for three audiences:
- Attendees — so you know why the gate beeps, why it sometimes does not, and what to do when it does not.
- Organisers — so you can pick the right format, the right print size, and the right level of security for what you are selling.
- Engineers — so you have a concise starting point before you open the ISO specs.
How we write
We aim for clear over clever, and accurate over comprehensive. If a detail is debatable we say so. If a figure is a typical value rather than a guarantee we label it that way. We do not review products, we do not sell tickets, and we do not accept paid placements.
How to reach us
Corrections, questions and suggestions are all welcome at [email protected]. We read everything, even if we cannot always reply the same week.