02 Feb, 2022

List of GS1 country codes (EAN-13 country barcodes)

The International Article Number (also known as European Article Number or EAN) is a standard describing a barcode symbology and numbering system used in global trade to identify a specific retail product type, in a specific packaging configuration, from a specific manufacturer. The standard has been subsumed in the Global Trade Item Number standard from the GS1 organization; the same numbers can be referred to as GTINs and can be encoded in other barcode symbologies defined by GS1. EAN barcodes are used worldwide for lookup at retail point of sale, but can also be used as numbers for other purposes such as wholesale ordering or accounting. These barcodes only represent the digits 0–9, unlike some other barcode symbologies which can represent additional characters.

The most commonly used EAN standard is the thirteen-digit EAN-13, a superset of the original 12-digit Universal Product Code (UPC-A) standard developed in 1970 by George J. Laurer.[1] An EAN-13 number includes a 3-digit GS1 prefix (indicating country of registration or special type of product). A prefix with a first digit of “0” indicates a 12-digit UPC-A code follows. A prefix with first two digits of “45” or “49” indicates a Japanese Article Number (JAN) follows.

Code Country
001–019 UPC-A compatible –  United States
020–029 UPC-A compatible – Used to issue restricted circulation numbers within a geographic region [1]
030–039 UPC-A compatible –  United States drugs (see United States National Drug Code)
040–049 UPC-A compatible – Used to issue restricted circulation numbers within a company
050–059 UPC-A compatible – GS1 US reserved for future use
060–099 UPC-A compatible –  United States
100–139  United States
200–299 Used to issue GS1 restricted circulation number within a geographic region
300–379  France and  Monaco
380  Bulgaria
383  Slovenia
385  Croatia
387  Bosnia and Herzegovina
389  Montenegro
390  Republic of Kosovo (EAN-imposed, no GS1 Member Organisation)
400–440  Germany (440 code inherited from former  East Germany upon reunification in 1990)
450–459  Japan (new Japanese Article Number range)
460–469  Russia (barcodes inherited from the  Soviet Union)
470  Kyrgyzstan
471  Taiwan
474  Estonia
475  Latvia
476  Azerbaijan
477  Lithuania
478  Uzbekistan
479  Sri Lanka
480  Philippines
481  Belarus
482  Ukraine
483  Turkmenistan
484  Moldova
485  Armenia
486  Georgia
487  Kazakhstan
488  Tajikistan
489  Hong Kong
490–499  Japan (original Japanese Article Number range)
500–509  United Kingdom
520–521  Greece
528  Lebanon
529  Cyprus
530  Albania
531  North Macedonia
535  Malta
539  Ireland
540–549  Belgium and  Luxembourg
560  Portugal
569  Iceland
570–579  Denmark Faroe Islands and  Greenland
590  Poland
594  Romania
599  Hungary
600–601  South Africa
603  Ghana
604  Senegal
607  Oman
608  Bahrain
609  Mauritius
611  Morocco
613  Algeria
615  Nigeria
616  Kenya
617  Cameroon
618  Ivory Coast
619  Tunisia
620  Tanzania
621  Syria
622  Egypt
623 “Managed by GS1 Global Office for future MO” (was  Brunei until May 2021)
624  Libya
625  Jordan
626  Iran
627  Kuwait
628  Saudi Arabia
629  United Arab Emirates
630  Qatar
631  Namibia[4]
640–649  Finland
680–681  China
690–699  China
700–709  Norway
729  Israel
730–739  Sweden
740  Guatemala
741  El Salvador
742  Honduras
743  Nicaragua
744  Costa Rica
745  Panama
746  Dominican Republic
750  Mexico
754–755  Canada
759  Venezuela
760–769   Switzerland and  Liechtenstein
770–771  Colombia
773  Uruguay
775  Peru
777  Bolivia
778–779  Argentina
780  Chile
784  Paraguay
786  Ecuador
789–790  Brazil
800–839  Italy San Marino and  Vatican City
840–849  Spain and  Andorra
850  Cuba
858  Slovakia
859  Czech Republic (barcode inherited from  Czechoslovakia)
860  Serbia (barcode inherited from  Yugoslavia and  Serbia and Montenegro)
865  Mongolia
867  North Korea
868–869  Turkey
870–879  Netherlands
880–881  South Korea
883  Myanmar
884  Cambodia
885  Thailand
888  Singapore
890  India[5]
893  Vietnam
894 “Managed by GS1 Global Office for future MO” ( Bangladesh?)
896  Pakistan
899  Indonesia
900–919  Austria
930–939  Australia
940–949  New Zealand
950 GS1 Global Office: Used to support territories & countries where no GS1 Member Organisation operates
951 Used to issue General Manager Numbers for the EPC General Identifier (GID) scheme as defined by the EPC Tag Data Standard
952 Used for demonstrations and examples of the GS1 system
955  Malaysia
958  Macau
960–961 GS1 UK Office: GTIN-8 allocations
962–969 GS1 Global Office: GTIN-8 allocations
977 Serial publications (ISSN)
978–979 Bookland” (ISBN) – 979-0 used for sheet music (“Musicland”, ISMN-13, replaces deprecated ISMN M- numbers)
980 Refund receipts
981–983 GS1 coupon identification for common currency areas
990–999 GS1 coupon identification

Note GS1 member companies can manufacture products anywhere in the world and can license prefixes from the GS1 organisation of their choice, GS1 prefixes do not identify the country of origin for a given product. GS1 prefixes not listed above are reserved by GS1 Global Office for allocations in countries where no GS1 Member Organisation established and for future use within the GS1 system. These are:

  • 140–199
  • 381, 382, 384, 386 & 388
  • 390–399
  • 441–449
  • 472 & 473
  • 510–519
  • 522–527
  • 532–534 & 536–538
  • 550–559
  • 561–568
  • 580–589
  • 591–593 & 595–598
  • 602 & 605–606
  • 610, 612, 614 & 623
  • 632–639
  • 650–679
  • 682–689
  • 710–728
  • 747–749
  • 751–753 & 756–758
  • 772, 774 & 776
  • 781–783, 785, 787 & 788
  • 791–799
  • 851–857
  • 861–864 & 866
  • 882, 886, 887 & 889
  • 891, 892, 894, 895, 897 & 898
  • 920–929
  • 953, 954, 956, 957 & 959
  • 970–976
  • 984–989

GS1 prefix

The first three digits of the EAN-13 (GS1 Prefix) usually identify the GS1 Member Organization which the manufacturer has joined (not necessarily where the product is actually made). Note that EAN-13 codes beginning with 0 are actually 12-digit UPC codes with prepended 0 digit. In recent years, more products sold by retailers outside the United States and Canada have been using EAN-13 codes beginning with 0, since they were generated by GS1-US.

The 020-029 GS1 Prefixes are worth a special mention. GS1 defines this as being available for retailer internal use (or internal use by other types of business). Some retailers use this for proprietary (own brand or unbranded) products, although many retailers obtain their own manufacturer’s code for their own brands. Other retailers use at least part of this prefix for products which are packaged in store, for example, items weighed and served over a counter for a customer. In these cases, the barcode may encode a price, quantity or weight along with a product identifier – in a retailer defined way. The product identifier may be one assigned by the Produce Electronic Identification Board (PEIB) or may be retailer assigned. Retailers who have historically used UPC barcodes tend to use GS1 prefixes starting with “02” for store-packaged products.

The EAN “country code” 978 (and later 979) has been allocated since the 1980s to reserve a Unique Country Code (UCC) prefix for EAN identifiers of published books, regardless of country of origin, so that the EAN space can catalog books by ISBNs rather than maintaining a redundant parallel numbering system. This is informally known as “Bookland“. The prefix 979 with first digit 0 is used for International Standard Music Number (ISMN) and the prefix 977 indicates International Standard Serial Number (ISSN).

Manufacturer code

The manufacturer code is a unique code assigned to each manufacturer by the numbering authority indicated by the GS1 Prefix. All products produced by a given company will use the same manufacturer code. EAN-13 uses what are called “variable-length manufacturer codes”. Assigning fixed-length 5-digit manufacturer codes, as the UCC has done until recently, means that each manufacturer can have up to 99,999 product codes. Many manufacturers do not have that many products, which means hundreds or even thousands of potential product codes are being wasted on manufacturers that only have a few products. Thus if a potential manufacturer knows that it is only going to produce a few products, EAN-13 may issue it a longer manufacturer code, leaving less space for the product code. This results in more efficient use of the available manufacturer and product codes.

In ISBN and ISSN, this component is used to identify the language in which the publication was issued and managed by a transnational agency covering several countries, or to identify the country where the legal deposits are made by a publisher registered with a national agency, and it is further subdivided any allocating subblocks for publishers; many countries have several prefixes allocated in the ISSN and ISBN registries.

Product code

The product code is assigned by the manufacturer. The product code immediately follows manufacturer code. The total length of manufacturer code plus product code should be 9 or 10 digits depending on the length of country code (2–3 digits).

In ISBN, ISMN and ISSN, it uniquely identifies the publication from the same publisher; it should be used and allocated by the registered publisher in order to avoid creating gaps; however it happens that a registered book or serial never gets published and sold.

Check digit

The check digit is an additional digit, used to verify that a barcode has been scanned correctly. It is computed modulo 10, where the weights in the checksum calculation alternate 3 and 1. In particular, since the weights are relatively prime to 10, the EAN-13 system will detect all single digit errors. It also recognizes 90% of transposition errors (all cases, where the difference between adjacent digits is not 5).

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