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Do you need a barcode to sell handmade products?

Published 28 September 2026; rules last checked 25 September 2026. A labelling reference, not legal advice.

Not by law: none of the label rules for soap, cosmetics, candles or food that this site's tools follow lists a barcode. You need one when a shop or marketplace you sell through asks for it, and then the number inside it has to come from GS1. The barcode is only the scannable form of that number, the GTIN (Global Trade Item Number), which identifies one product. The ingredient, hazard and allergen rules decide what your label must say; a barcode is a condition some sellers set on top.

When you need one

• Shops that scan at the till. GS1 UK says most retailers and online marketplaces require these numbers to sell a product, and retailers generally set this out in their supplier requirements.
• Online marketplaces set their own rules. GS1 US answers "maybe" for online-only sellers and advises checking each marketplace's requirements.
• Amazon in the US lets handmade and private-label products that have no barcode list under a GTIN exemption. The exemption is not open to a product that already carries a GS1 barcode.
• Your own website, markets and fairs, and shops that do not scan need no barcode.

Where the number comes from

From GS1, through its office in your country. They license a GS1 Company Prefix, a block of numbers from which you number your own products; some, GS1 US among them, also license single numbers for a few products. GS1 UK is plain that GS1 is the only place to get legitimate numbers: one bought elsewhere cannot be traced back to your brand and may not be unique, and a retailer can look up in GS1's records whose number it is. Keep the licence current, too: GS1 US explains that when a prefix licence lapses, you may no longer use its numbers on your products.

Each product needs its own number, and so does each version of it. GS1 US lists a different size, colour, style or pack count as reasons for a new number, so a soap sold in two sizes needs two.

Making the barcode

Once you have the number, the free barcode generator draws it as GS1 specifies, and each of the label tools can put it at the foot of your label (Barcode, under the label's design). The rules that matter on a small label:

• Size. At the standard size an EAN-13 is 37.29 mm wide, its blank margins included, and 25.93 mm tall with its digits. The smallest GS1 allows at a shop's till is 80 % of that, 29.83 × 20.74 mm.
• Height. Never cut the bars shorter to save space: GS1 ties the minimum height to the size.
• Colour. Dark bars on a light background, black on white the safest. Scanners use red light, so bars in red and other warm colours can lose their contrast, and white bars on a dark background cannot be read.
• Margins. Keep the blank space either side of the bars clear of any other print.

Where it goes on the product

GS1's preferred place is the lower right quarter of the back of the product, at least 8 mm from the package's edge. On a jar or bottle, never on the neck; and on a container less than 60 mm across, turn a full-size barcode on its side so that its bars run around the curve, or its ends can disappear from the scanner's view.

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