We run BarcodeReport, which is one of the ten APIs in this comparison. So read it knowing who wrote it. We've tried to make it useful anyway: every price below comes from the provider's own pricing page, the sources are linked at the end, and where another API is the better choice for a job, we say so.
Prices checked October 20, 2026. Providers change plans often, so follow the links before you buy. We'll recheck this page every quarter and update the date when we do.
The short answer
- Lowest entry price with a large database: BarcodeReport, $24.95 a month for 10,000 lookups.
- Free, no sign-up: UPCitemdb's Explorer plan, 100 requests a day.
- Food with nutrition and allergens: Open Food Facts. It's free and open data.
- Lowest monthly price from about 50,000 lookups: EAN-Search, €39 for 50,000 and €149 for 300,000.
- You don't want to pay for barcodes that aren't found: Barcode Lookup, or Go-UPC on its main lookup endpoint.
- One-off enrichment of a big list: EAN-DB's bulk rate of €0.005 a barcode, if its database covers your codes.
None of that tells you which API finds your barcodes. The test at the end does, and it takes an afternoon.
The comparison table
| Provider | Free option | Entry plan | Per 1,000 at entry | Largest listed plan | Database size (provider's claim) | Misses billed? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BarcodeReport | 100 lookups/mo, no card | $24.95/mo, 10,000 | $2.50 | $199/mo, 200,000 ($1.00 per 1,000) | 500M+ records | Yes |
| Barcode Lookup | Free test account | $99/mo, 5,000 | $19.80 | $949/mo, 500,000 ($1.90) | Not stated on pages we checked | No |
| UPCitemdb | 100 requests/day, no sign-up | $99/mo, 20,000 per day | $0.165* | $699/mo, 150,000 per day ($0.16*) | 752M unique UPC/EAN numbers | Not stated |
| Go-UPC | Trial key on request | $74.95/mo, 5,000 | $14.99 | $795/mo, 450,000 ($1.77) | 500M+ products | No, on main lookup |
| EAN-Search | 100 queries, €1 first month | €19/mo, 5,000 | €3.80 | €149/mo, 300,000 (€0.50) | 1.3 billion products | Not stated |
| Barcode Spider | 7-day trial, no card | $39/mo, 10,000 | $3.90 | $249/mo, 200,000 ($1.25) | "Over 1 billion" entries | Not stated |
| UPC Database | 100 lookups, throttled | $10/mo, 10,000** | $1.00 or less** | $25/mo, 100,000** | 4.3 million barcodes | Not stated |
| EAN-DB | 250 calls after sign-up | €9 for 5,000 (prepaid pack) | €1.80 | €249 for 300,000 (€0.83); bulk €0.005 per barcode | 70.8 million products | Not stated |
| BarcodeNest | 250 calls/mo | $9.99/mo, 2,000 | $5.00 | $19.99/mo, 5,000 ($4.00) | 4.35 million products | Not stated |
| Open Food Facts | Free, no key | n/a | $0 | n/a | 4.8 million products, mostly food | n/a |
*UPCitemdb's allowances are daily and don't roll over. The per-1,000 figure assumes you use the full allowance every day of the month (20,000 a day is 600,000 a month).
**UPC Database's pricing page lists prices "per month" but also says allowances "reset daily", and it doesn't say which applies to the 10,000. Ask them before you budget.
About the database sizes. Each provider counts differently: unique barcode numbers, records or products. Some records are a bare title and others are full listings. Treat the claims as orders of magnitude, not as a ranking of who will find your codes. Ours is no exception.
Each provider in brief
BarcodeReport (us)
We have the lowest entry price in this table among the large databases: $24.95 a month for 10,000 lookups, then $74.95 for 50,000, $99.99 for 100,000 and $199 for 200,000. The free plan gives 100 lookups a month without a card. The API takes up to 100 barcodes in one POST /api/v1/lookup request and has a product search endpoint (GET /api/v1/search?q=). There is an OpenAPI spec, an MCP server for AI assistants and a Google Sheets function, all usable on the free plan. For people who don't write code, bulk lookup takes a CSV of up to 100,000 barcodes, tells you for free how many match, and returns results within 24 to 48 hours.
Where we're weaker: a not-found barcode counts as a lookup. Every record has a title, but brand, category, images and price are present on a smaller share of records. At high volume, EAN-Search and UPCitemdb list lower prices per lookup. And bulk lookup costs $0.10 a barcode, which is far more per code than our own API (Standard works out to $0.0025 a lookup). If you can run a short script, the API is the cheaper route.
Barcode Lookup
Barcode Lookup is the name most people already know, and it's listed in places like RapidAPI and Zapier. Its plans run from $99 a month for 5,000 calls to $949 for 500,000. Its documentation says quota is only used when a request returns data, so not-found barcodes are free. The documented rate limit is 100 requests a minute. At entry level it's the most expensive per lookup here, but if your match rate is low, not paying for misses narrows the gap.
UPCitemdb
The easiest way to try a barcode API: the Explorer plan gives 100 requests a day with no sign-up at all. Paid plans are priced by the day: DEV is $99 a month for 20,000 lookups a day, PRO is $699 for 150,000 a day. If you have steady, high daily volume, that's the lowest price per lookup in this comparison. If your volume is bursty, unused days are lost. The DEV plan also has a burst limit of 15 lookups per 30 seconds. UPCitemdb claims more than 752 million unique UPC and EAN numbers.
Go-UPC
Go-UPC's plans are $74.95 a month for 5,000 requests, $245 for 45,000 and $795 for 450,000, and it claims more than 500 million products. Its FAQ says lookups that return no result don't count against your monthly usage on the main endpoint. You can request a trial key from the plans page.
EAN-Search
From about 50,000 lookups a month, EAN-Search has the lowest monthly prices here: €39 for 50,000, €99 for 150,000 and €149 for 300,000 (prices include tax). It claims 1.3 billion products. It also has good developer tooling: an OpenAPI spec and an MCP server for AI assistants. The trial is 100 queries for €1 in the first month.
Barcode Spider
Barcode Spider charges $39 a month for 10,000 requests, $89 for 50,000 and $249 for 200,000. The two higher plans include bulk lookup. There's a 7-day free trial without a card. Its homepage claims "over 1 billion global entries" and, elsewhere, "500 million to 1.5 billion records".
UPC Database
UPC Database has the lowest list prices in the table, $10 for 10,000 lookups and $25 for 100,000. But its database is far smaller, about 4.3 million barcodes against hundreds of millions for the larger providers. That can still be enough for a hobby project that scans common grocery items. Test before you rely on it, and confirm whether the allowance is daily or monthly.
EAN-DB
EAN-DB sells prepaid packs instead of subscriptions: €9 for 5,000 calls, €69 for 50,000 and €249 for 300,000. That suits irregular usage. You get 250 free calls after registering. For a one-off job, it offers bulk lookups and partial database dumps at €0.005 a barcode, the lowest per-code price for bulk in this comparison. The catch is coverage: 70.8 million products.
BarcodeNest
BarcodeNest has a free plan of 250 calls a month at 30 requests a minute, then $9.99 for 2,000 and $19.99 for 5,000. Its 4.35 million products are derived from Open Food Facts and other open datasets, so its coverage leans toward food, beauty and pet food.
Open Food Facts
If you're building a food app, start here. Open Food Facts is a free, open database of about 4.8 million products, with ingredients, nutrition and allergens that general barcode databases rarely carry. Reads need no key, but they're limited to 15 a minute per IP address. You must also send a custom User-Agent. The data is under the Open Database License, which requires attribution and has share-alike terms for derived databases. We use it ourselves to fill in food records, with attribution.
Which one should you pick?
| If you are... | Look at |
|---|---|
| Prototyping or building a hobby app | UPCitemdb Explorer (no sign-up), BarcodeReport's free plan, BarcodeNest's free plan, or Open Food Facts for food |
| A small business doing a few thousand lookups a month | BarcodeReport Standard ($24.95 for 10,000). If your match rate is low, Go-UPC or Barcode Lookup, which don't bill misses |
| Doing 50,000 to 300,000 lookups a month | EAN-Search for the lowest list price. BarcodeReport ($74.95 for 50,000, $199 for 200,000) and Barcode Spider ($89 for 50,000) are close |
| Running high, steady daily volume | UPCitemdb's daily plans |
| Building a food or nutrition app | Open Food Facts |
| Enriching one big list, once | EAN-DB's bulk rate if it covers your codes. Our bulk lookup if you want a free match count first and no code |
| Connecting an AI assistant today | EAN-Search's MCP server, or ours, which works on the free plan |
Test on your own codes before you pay
Coverage is uneven between providers and between product categories. A database that's deep on US grocery can be thin on European cosmetics or regional brands. A sample of your own codes shows you more than any table.
Pick them at random from your real catalog, not the ones you remember. If you mix categories (books and grocery, say), sample each one separately.
Codes that lost a leading zero in a spreadsheet, or have a wrong check digit, fail everywhere and drag every result down. Clean them with the check digit calculator, which handles thousands at once.
On our side, the free API plan covers 100 lookups a month. Or upload the whole sample as a CSV to bulk lookup and see the free match count before paying anything. Our Python and JavaScript guides have working code you can point at each provider.
For providers that bill misses, divide the price per 1,000 lookups by your match rate. At a 70% match rate, our Standard plan's $2.50 per 1,000 becomes $3.57 per 1,000 products found. For providers that don't bill misses, the price per 1,000 is already the price per 1,000 found: $14.99 on Go-UPC's entry plan, for example.
Then spot-check 20 or 30 matches against the actual packaging. A wrong title is worse than a miss.
Frequently asked questions
It depends on your volume. As of October 2026, the lowest entry price with a large database is BarcodeReport at $24.95 a month for 10,000 lookups. From around 50,000 lookups a month, EAN-Search lists lower monthly prices (€39 for 50,000). For steady daily volume, UPCitemdb's daily plans are the cheapest per lookup. UPC Database lists $10 for 10,000 but has a much smaller database.
Yes. UPCitemdb's Explorer plan allows 100 requests a day without signing up. BarcodeReport's free plan gives 100 lookups a month with no card, BarcodeNest gives 250 calls a month, and EAN-DB gives 250 calls after registration. For food, Open Food Facts is free and open, limited to 15 product reads a minute per IP address.
By their own claims, EAN-Search (1.3 billion products) and Barcode Spider ("over 1 billion" entries) are the largest. UPCitemdb (752 million unique numbers), Go-UPC (500 million+) and BarcodeReport (500M+ records) come next. The providers count differently, so the claims aren't directly comparable. A sample of your own barcodes is the only reliable way to compare coverage.
Some do. Barcode Lookup's documentation says only requests that return data count against your quota, and Go-UPC's FAQ says the same for its main lookup endpoint. BarcodeReport counts not-found lookups. To compare fairly, divide each billed-miss price by your match rate.
We check every provider's pricing page each quarter and change the "prices checked" date at the top when we do. If you spot a price that has changed, tell us and we'll correct it.
Next steps
- Get a free API key and run your sample through our API.
- Bulk lookup: upload a CSV and see the free match count before paying.
- API documentation: endpoints, response fields, rate limits and error codes.
- Pricing: every plan on one page.
Sources (checked October 20, 2026): Barcode Lookup API and documentation; UPCitemdb plans and homepage; Go-UPC plans and FAQ; EAN-Search API; Barcode Spider API and homepage; UPC Database pricing and homepage; EAN-DB; BarcodeNest; Open Food Facts API and homepage.
