Open source & licensing
Last updated: 1 July 2026.
The QR generator itself isn't a black box. It's published on GitHub under a copyleft licence, so you can read exactly what it does, check our privacy claims against the source, or run your own copy. The hosted account layer is not published. Here's precisely what's open and what isn't, in plain terms, because a page like this is worthless if it overstates the case.
What's open, and under which licence
- The QR generator — the tool that makes your code: payload types, styling and exports, the part that runs in your browser — is licensed under the GNU AGPL-3.0. You're free to use, study, modify and redistribute it. The one obligation: if you run a modified version as a network service, you must make your source changes available to its users under the same licence. That copyleft is deliberate — it keeps this open tool (and anything built on it) open.
- The client libraries — the TypeScript SDK (
@open-qr/sdk) and the n8n community node — are licensed under MIT. These are meant to be embedded, including in closed-source and commercial products, so we picked the most permissive sensible licence. Call the API from anything, ship it anywhere. - What is not published:the hosted account layer — the dashboard, dynamic (editable) codes, scan analytics, the REST API and the MCP server. That code is closed. You can use all of it free at openqr.uk, but you can't self-host it, and we'd rather say so here than let you find out after cloning.
In short: the generator is copyleft-open (AGPL), the integration glue is permissive (MIT), and the hosted service around them is not open source.
Self-hosting
Because the generator is AGPL, you can run your own copy. Clone the repository, then pnpm install, pnpm build and pnpm start. It's a standard Next.js app that needs no database, no environment variables and no secrets, because the generator is entirely client-side — so it's happy on a VPS, a Raspberry Pi on an office LAN, or behind any reverse proxy you already run. Our self-hosting guide walks through it, including what the AGPL actually obliges you to do.
Transparency by default
- No watermark, ever — the codes you export are clean, at any size, forever.
- No sign-up for the tool — generating a QR needs no account and no email.
- Your data stays in your browser — static codes are never uploaded. See our privacy policy.
- Auditable security — how we protect the account layer, and how to report an issue, is on our security page.
- Listed in the open ecosystem — the MCP server is published to public MCP registries, and the API ships a standard OpenAPI 3.1 spec.
Guides
Longer, practical write-ups on running and building with open-source QR tooling:
- How to self-host a QR code generator — whether you need to, exactly what the repository contains, deploying it, and what AGPL-3.0 asks of you.
- Open-source QR code libraries — which library to use by language, with verified licences, and the licence trap to check before you ship.
- Making QR codes offline and privately — how to verify in your browser that a generator isn't uploading what you type.
- Free QR codes with no watermark — what “free” should mean, and the two traps hiding in tools that claim it.
How it stays free
A QR code costs essentially nothing to generate, so the core tool is free and always will be. If you're curious how that adds up, we wrote it out on why OpenQR is free.