How to get an EAN code in Poland

GS1 Polska issues the number; the code you can draw yourself. What to do, what it costs, and why second-hand numbers can be expensive.

Published October 29, 2026

The barcode on a package is two different things at once, and they are easy to confuse. The first is the number: thirteen digits that identify one particular product anywhere in the world. The second is the code, the pattern of bars that holds that number in a form a scanner can read.

The number has to be issued to you. The code you can draw yourself, for nothing.

GS1 issues the number, not your printer

GTIN numbers, written as EAN-13 barcodes, are issued by GS1 — in Poland by GS1 Polska. Not by your printer, your wholesaler, a marketplace, or us.

That is because the number is not arbitrary. It contains a company prefix tied to one particular business in a global database. If everybody issued their own numbers, two different products would end up with the same one and the whole mechanism would stop working.

What to do

1. Count the numbers you need. One number per variant sold to a consumer: another size, flavour or colour is another number. An outer case sold as a unit has its own number too.
2. Apply to GS1 Polska for a pool of the right size. The pools are banded: up to 10, up to 100, up to 1000, and larger.
3. Pay the fees. There are two: a one-off registration fee for the pool, and an annual fee that follows your company's revenue.
4. Register your products and assign them numbers from the pool.
5. Generate the codes and put them on the packaging.

Step five is the one you can do here and now.

What it costs

A new company with annual net revenue up to 2 million PLN gets a pool of ten numbers with no registration fee and pays only the annual one. Above that threshold the smallest pool to apply for is a hundred, and the annual fee rises with revenue.

The exact amounts, and an estimate for your own case, are in the GS1 fee calculator. Remember that the annual fee returns every twelve months — it is not a one-off cost.

Second-hand numbers

EAN numbers are sold online for far less than joining GS1 costs. They come from pools assigned to other companies, often many years ago.

Such a number is arithmetically correct — the check digit adds up and a scanner will read it. But the prefix inside it belongs to that other company, and that is how the GS1 database records it. Whether this matters depends on the buyer: some retail chains and marketplaces check who owns the prefix and reject the number.

We neither sell such numbers nor act as an intermediary for them. We only say how they differ, because you cannot tell by looking at the code.

Once you have a number

Type it in below and download the file. The code is built in your browser; the number is never sent anywhere.

If you have twelve digits, we add the check digit. If you have thirteen and want to know whether it adds up, use the check digit calculator — it shows the whole calculation, not just a verdict.

Before it goes to print

A barcode has physical dimensions, and they decide whether it gets read. Do not scale a finished file by eye in a graphics program: changing the width changes the module width, which the standard holds to a range. Download the code at its final size, as SVG or PDF, and place it at that size.

Leave the clear space around it, too. That is not an aesthetic margin but the quiet zone the standard requires: without it a scanner cannot tell where the code begins.