QR Code for a Phone Number

This generator encodes a phone number payload. The grammar is: tel:NUMBER, with the number in E.164 and its leading plus.

The example above, tel:+15551234567, is 16 bytes, which at error correction level M fits a version 2 symbol, 25 modules square. The encoder scored all eight mask patterns and chose 1, which is not a preference: the specification requires the lowest-penalty mask, so any correct encoder given this text produces this identical image.

Write the number in E.164: a leading plus, the country code, then the national number with no spaces, hyphens or brackets. tel:+15551234567 works everywhere; tel:(555) 123-4567 works from inside one country and fails from outside it, which is exactly the case a printed code is most likely to meet. Most scanners show the number and ask before dialing rather than dialing immediately, which is the correct behavior and means this is safe to print. A related format, sms:+15551234567?body=text, opens a composed message instead.

On the error correction level: M recovers about 15% of the symbol. That is the single most useful dial on a QR code and the one most often left alone. Raising it costs capacity, which pushes the version up, which makes each module smaller at the same printed size. So the right level is the lowest one that survives where the code will live. A code on a screen needs almost none; a code on a sticker on a machine needs a lot.

Nothing about this is sent anywhere. The code is built from the text in the field, in your browser, and the site has no server that could receive it. It also does not expire, because there is no redirect in it: what the camera reads is your payload, not a reference to a row in somebody's database. A QR code that goes through a shortener stops working the day the shortener does.