Barcode Company Prefix

Understanding Company Prefixes

Two Ways to Get a Unique Prefix

Some manufacturers want a unique company prefix for their barcodes. You have only two sure ways to get one:

• Join GS1 – but pay their expensive joining fee and annual fees for life.

• Buy from us in bulk – we provide unique prefixes with blocks of 10, 100, 1000, or 10,000 barcodes. We are the only barcode seller we know that does this.

Note: A single barcode purchase (from any seller) never includes a company prefix.

How Prefix Length Works

When you buy bulk barcodes from us, they share a unique company prefix. The prefix length depends on how many numbers you buy:

• 10 numbers – first 11 digits are the prefix, the 12th digit varies (0–9), and the last digit is a checksum.

• 20 numbers – you get 2 prefixes, each giving 10 barcodes.

• 100 numbers – first 10 digits are the prefix, the 11th & 12th digits vary (00–99), plus a checksum.

Barcodes can be purchased here.

Manufacturer Code – Myth

There is common myth that a barcode number is split into 4 parts. e.g. this from Wikipedia

The 13-digit EAN-13 number consists of four components:

• Prefix – 3 digits (often called a country code)
• Manufacturer Code – variable length
• Product Code – variable length
• Check digit

The Changing GS1 System

For many years, GS1 issued blocks of 100,000 numbers to manufacturers. Those used digits 8–12 for the product code, with a 3‑digit country code at the start. That left digits 4–7 for the manufacturer code.

But GS1 realized this wasted numbers. With only 1,000,000,000,000 EAN‑13 combinations available globally, they needed a change. So in many countries, they reduced the initial block size to 10,000, 1,000, 100, 10, or even 1.

How the breakdown shifts:

So – considering the number above – if it was issued as a block of 100,000 numbers, then it could be broken down as –
070 = country code

5632 = manufacturer code

44194 = product code

7 = check digit

This can be written as cccmmmmpppppc (ccc = country code, mmmm = manufacturer code, ppppp= product code, c = check digit)

With this pattern, the ccc and mmm parts stay the same for a manufacturer, while the pp part shows product variations.

What About a Single Number?

If GS1 issued just one number, there would be no room for a separate manufacturer code. The structure would become cccpppppppppc – where the entire sequence acts as the product code, with no identifiable manufacturer segment.

And this is exactly what GS1 has done in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania – they issue single numbers to manufacturers. By doing so, they clearly show that the “manufacturer code” concept is not always true, and certainly not essential.

But what would happen if GS1 issued a single number? How could a single number have a common ‘manufacturer code’ and then a part that varies (the product code)?
Following this pattern, the code (for a single number) should be cccmmmmmmmmmc – but this is meaningless as there is no “product code”.  So in reality a number like this should be expressed as cccpppppppppc – where the full sequence of ‘p’ is the product code, and there is no manufacturer code.  (or even as pppppppppppc)
Obviously this is logical – if a single number is issued, then that full number is the product code and there is no common ‘manufacturer code’.