The best barcode software of 2026

BarTender is the label designer to choose when printing labels is part of your daily work. Its maker, Seagull Software, says more than 250,000 companies use it, and the plans are built around how labels get printed in a warehouse or factory: templates that pull data from a file or database at print time, RFID encoding, and integrations that let another system send print jobs.

You pay by the year, on 1, 3 or 5-year agreements, with no monthly option. Starter ($199 a year) covers simple barcode labels for a single user. Professional ($299 a year) adds RFID and data-driven templates, which you need if one template should print a different label for every row of a spreadsheet. Automation ($575 a year) adds a REST API and File Drop, so your order system can print a shipping label by saving a file to a folder. Enterprise adds permissions and full audit trails, and you have to ask for a quote.

If you'd rather design in a browser and keep every template in one place, BarTender Cloud starts at $390 a year. The 30-day trial includes every feature.

Choose it if you print labels every day from a database, an ERP or a warehouse system, or you need RFID tags.

Skip it if you print a few dozen barcodes a month. A one-time Mac app like iBarcoder, or the label designer inside your inventory tool, will cost far less.

Orca Scan works like a spreadsheet that fills itself. You scan a barcode with a phone or tablet, a row appears in a sheet your whole team can see, and you add the columns you care about, such as location, quantity or condition. The app can record GPS location with each scan, works offline, and runs on iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows and Linux. When a phone camera gets too slow, you can add hardware scanners.

It makes labels too. Every plan, the free one included, has a barcode label generator and designer, so you can print tags for equipment or stock that has no barcode yet.

The free plan gives one user one sheet, enough to try it on a single stockroom. Starter costs $39 a month billed yearly, or $49 month to month, for 2 users, 5 sheets and 2,000 rows a sheet. Business ($79 a month billed yearly, $99 monthly) raises that to 5 users, 10 sheets and 10,000 rows, and adds the integrations most teams want: Excel, Google Sheets, Zapier, Make, Power BI and Tableau. Orca Scan is based in Cambridge, UK, and says more than 50,000 organizations use it.

Choose it if you track equipment, samples or stock counts and want the data in a sheet instead of a full inventory system.

Skip it if you need purchase orders, sales orders or invoices. Orca Scan records what you scan, and inFlow handles the buying and selling.

Sortly suits businesses whose stock isn't for sale: a contractor's tools, a school's laptops, a clinic's supplies. You add an item with a photo, file it in a folder for its room, van or shelf, and print a QR code or barcode label for it. After that, anyone with the iPhone or Android app can scan the label to check a quantity or move the item, even offline, and the office can work in the web app. Low-stock and date-based alerts tell you when to reorder or service something.

Sortly prices by unique items and users. The free plan covers 100 items and one user. Advanced ($24 a month billed yearly in the first year, or $49 month to month) covers 500 items and 2 users, with unlimited QR code labels. Barcode labels need Ultra ($74 a month billed yearly in the first year, $149 monthly), which covers 2,000 items and 5 users. QuickBooks Online sync comes with Premium ($149 a month billed yearly in the first year, $299 monthly). The yearly prices are half off for the first year only, and after that Sortly takes 20% off.

Every paid plan has a 14-day trial, but Sortly asks for a card and starts charging when the trial ends unless you cancel. It says more than 15,000 businesses use it.

Choose it if you want people on site or in the field to update stock by scanning a label with their phone.

Skip it if you sell products and need sales orders. inFlow is built for that.

inFlow is a full inventory system built around barcodes. You can import the UPC or EAN codes already on your products or let inFlow generate internal barcodes, then design labels with serial numbers and prices in its Label Designer and print them from a PC, Mac or phone. inFlow works with any printer but says thermal label printers work best. Staff scan with the camera on an iPhone or Android phone, or with inFlow's rugged Android scanner, sold separately.

The difference from the scan-only tools here is that inFlow handles buying and selling as well. Every Inventory plan includes unlimited products, sales, purchases and integrations. Lite costs $99 a month billed yearly, or $129 month to month, for 2 team members and one location. Core ($299 a month billed yearly, $379 monthly) covers 5 team members and 5 locations. inFlow Manufacturing, which includes everything in Inventory, starts at $169 a month billed yearly.

For a supply room or tool crib, inFlow Stockroom is the cheaper product: $69 a month billed yearly, or $89 monthly, with unlimited scanning users in the mobile app and 2 admins for the web app, but no sales features.

The trial lasts 14 days and needs no card.

Choose it if you sell physical products and want stock, orders and barcode labels in one system.

Skip it if your budget is small. Lite costs $1,188 a year, several times what Sortly or Orca Scan charge a small team.

HandiFox adds barcode scanning to QuickBooks. HandiFox Online syncs stock, sales and purchasing with QuickBooks Online around the clock, and your team works from the web app or the iPhone and Android apps: receiving, counting, picking, packing and transfers, all by scanning. Every plan includes barcoding with label printing, and HandiFox can run without QuickBooks if you switch accounting tools later.

HandiFox Online Start costs $49 a month billed yearly, or $59 monthly, for 2 users, 1 mobile device and 1 location. Optima ($95 a month billed yearly, $105 monthly) covers 4 users, 2 devices and 3 locations. Pro ($129 billed yearly, $159 monthly) adds phone support, unlimited locations and a B2B portal for your customers. Extra users cost $15 a month and extra devices $40 a month. HandiFox's page labels these as prices "until August 1st" without a year, so confirm them at checkout.

For QuickBooks Desktop there's HandiFox Desktop, a $1,995 one-time license per Android device, with optional support at $495 a year per device. The online version has a 14-day trial and the desktop version 30 days. HandiFox says it has helped more than 300 small companies.

Choose it if your books live in QuickBooks and you want warehouse staff scanning orders against them.

Skip it if you don't use QuickBooks. inFlow covers the same warehouse work on its own and has more room to grow.

iBarcoder is a Mac app for one job: making barcode graphics and labels. It handles more than 60 linear and 2D symbologies, including UPC-A, EAN-13, ISBN, Code 128, QR Code, Data Matrix, Aztec and PDF417, and prints onto standard Avery label formats or label sizes you set up and save yourself. Its sequential numbering builds a run of labels from a counter (prefix, start number and step) or from a text or Excel file.

You pay $49.99 once for a lifetime license with free updates, and the unregistered download works as a full trial. It needs macOS 10.15 or later and the developer says it is ready for macOS 26 Tahoe. Version 3.18.7 came out on October 14, 2026, so the app is still maintained.

Choose it if you print retail barcodes, book barcodes or asset tags from a Mac a few times a month.

Skip it if you need to scan barcodes or keep stock records, because iBarcoder only makes them. On Windows, look at BarTender.

Asset Panda tracks equipment rather than stock: laptops, vehicles, medical devices, tools on a building site. Staff scan barcode or QR labels with the iPhone or Android app to record checkouts, transfers, returns and inspections, and each scan adds to the item's chain-of-custody history. You can schedule preventive maintenance, change the fields, workflows and reports to suit each team, and order durable asset tags and labels.

Asset Panda aims at government, education, healthcare, construction and manufacturing. The Dallas, Texas company says more than 10,000 organizations have used it since 2012.

It publishes no prices. You ask for a custom quote, and the 7-day trial follows that conversation.

Choose it if you manage hundreds or thousands of assets across several sites and need a record of who had each one and when.

Skip it if you want a published price and a same-day start. Sortly and Orca Scan both let you begin free.