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UPC and EAN Barcode Country Codes

Barcodes Pro, 2020-09-18 3 min read
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UPC and EAN Barcode Country Codes

The common question about barcodes that we get a lot from our customers is whether you can tell where something is manufactured.

Barcode prefixes do not provide identification country of origin for a specific product. They merely provide number capacity for the assignment of barcode prefixes by the GS1 to different countries. UPC Barcodes do not show the leading zero. A UPC Barcode that starts with 7 would have a country code of 070 – 079.

The ONLY legal way to get started with these given country codes is to join GS1 – that means completing the membership forms, and paying GS1 joining fees and annual membership fees – which is very costly (GS1 only licenses the numbers to you – so you have to pay their annual fees for the remainder of the product life per year).

There is a misconception of the barcode number indicating the product's country of origin. Please see this Snopes article about the roots of this myth and its debunking. All barcodes and barcode systems are designed for international use, so there are virtually no restrictions based on the country of origin worldwide.

List of UPC and EAN barcode country codes

Here is the current list of barcode country codes used worldwide. Link to GitHub

  • 000 – 019 United States and Canada
  • 020 – 029 Restricted distribution
  • 030 – 039 United States drugs (National Drug Code)
  • 040 – 049 Used to issue restricted circulation numbers within a geographic region
  • 050 – 059 Reserved for future use
  • 060 – 099 United States and Canada