Encoding Modes

How QR codes encode data: numeric, alphanumeric, byte, and kanji modes.

Numeric

0001

The most efficient encoding mode, packing three decimal digits into 10 bits (3.33 bits per character). Only supports the characters …

Alphanumeric

0010

Encodes pairs of characters from a 45-character set into 11 bits (5.5 bits per character). Supports uppercase A-Z, digits 0-9, …

Byte

0100

Encodes each character as a full 8-bit byte, supporting the entire ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) character set by default, or any …

Kanji

1000

Encodes characters from the Shift JIS double-byte character set at 13 bits per character, providing more efficient encoding for Japanese …

ECI (Extended Channel Interpretation)

0111

A meta-mode that switches the character encoding interpretation for subsequent data segments. ECI allows QR codes to specify character sets …