PDF417 2D Barcode - Specifications

This code was developed by Symbol Inc. and subsequently standardized by AIM USA in 1994. The code can carry up to about 1,800 characters (To put this in perspective consider the UPC bar code on your every day grocery products: It holds only 12 digits). The symbology supports various compaction modes for text, numbers or binary data. PDF417 features a very capable error correction mechanism that can restore a barcode symbol that has been destroyed to about 50%. The level of error correction can be determined by the user; the higher the error correction capacity the smaller the amount of usable data that can be encoded.

Sample barcode encodes the text "ABCDEFGH01234567":

Sample barcode created with our barcode plugin for Adobe Illustrator.

This symbology is still very popular in applications that require large amounts of data to be carried in a machine-readable fashion. For example, it is widely used throughout the automotive industry. Here the code encodes production data on package lists etc. It's also used for the tagging of ID cards or driver's licenses, especially in the US. However, compared to recent 2D matrix codes (Datamatrix, QR Code) PDF 417 takes up about twice as much space for the same amount of data.

Technically PDF 417 is a so called stacked barcode, meaning that is is constructed from linear barcodes which are stacked upon each other. Scanning such a code requires a dedicated 2-dimensional barcode scanner. Barcode wands will not scan this barcode.

Software to create PDF 417

PDF 417 is standardized by ISO (ISO/IEC 15438:2007). Click for PDF417 specification (ISO website).