Barcode lookup and price checker
Scan the barcode with your camera or type the digits underneath it. You get what the item sells for second hand, not its retail price, with sold listings to check the number against.
Example estimate
Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera
$190
Usually sells for $120 – $320
Your result appears here.
Which code to type
Every one of these is the number printed under the bars. Spaces and dashes are fine, and the last digit is a checksum, so a mistyped code is caught rather than looked up as the wrong product.
- UPC-A — 12 digits, the usual code on products sold in the US and Canada.
- EAN-13 — 13 digits, the same idea in Europe and most of the rest of the world.
- EAN-8 — 8 digits, used on packaging too small for a full code.
- GTIN-14 — 14 digits, usually on an outer case rather than a single item.
- ISBN-10 — on the back of a book, sometimes ending in an X.
Where a barcode stops being useful
A barcode is an exact product identifier, which makes it the fastest way in for anything mass produced and still in print: a game, a book, a boxed toy, a piece of consumer electronics. It has two real limits.
The first is condition. Two copies of the same book with the same ISBN can be worth ten times different amounts depending on edition, printing and wear, and the code cannot tell them apart. Add a line about condition in the notes field, or photograph it instead.
The second is coverage. Collectibles, antiques, handmade goods, most vintage items and anything with a store-printed label simply have no universal code. Those are photo or description territory.
Once you have a number, work out what you would keep after fees or see what a pawn shop would offer.
How the scanning works, and why nothing is uploaded
The camera scanner uses the barcode reader built into the browser itself. The video never leaves your device, no frames are uploaded, and no app or extension is involved: the browser decodes the code locally and hands back the digits, which is the only thing that gets sent anywhere. That is also why the scanner appears on some browsers and not others, since it depends on a capability the browser either has or does not.
Where it is unavailable, typing the digits gives exactly the same result. The check digit built into every UPC, EAN and GTIN is verified before anything is looked up, so a mistyped code is rejected immediately rather than quietly returning a valuation for a different product. That is a small thing that prevents a specific and common failure: transposing two digits and getting a confident answer about somebody else’s item.
Barcodes, retail price and resale value
A barcode is a product identifier and nothing more. It does not encode a price, it does not encode a date of manufacture, and it carries no information at all about the particular copy in your hands. Two items sharing a barcode can be worth very different amounts: a sealed boxed one and a loose one, a first printing and a tenth, a working unit and a broken one.
It says nothing about retail either. Shops set their own prices, the same code sells for different amounts in different countries, and the figure on the shelf today is rarely related to what the item fetches second hand. What you get here is resale value, which for most mass-produced goods sits well below retail and for a small number of discontinued items sits well above it. If the answer matters, add a line about condition and completeness in the notes; that single sentence usually narrows the range more than the barcode did.
Scanning is at its best on a shelf of unknowns: a box of games, a stack of books, a cupboard of boxed electronics. Working through them by code takes seconds each and sorts the pile into the few worth photographing properly and the many that are not, which is usually the whole point of the exercise.
Questions about barcode lookups
What barcodes can I look up?
UPC-A (12 digits), EAN-13 and EAN-8, GTIN-14 and ISBN-10 from the back of a book. The digits printed under the bars are the code. If the check digit does not add up the code is rejected, which usually means a digit was mistyped.
Can I scan the barcode with my phone camera?
On Chrome and most Android browsers, yes: the scanner uses the browser's own barcode reader, so nothing is uploaded and no app is needed. Safari on iPhone does not support it, so there you type the digits instead.
Is a barcode as good as a photo?
No. A barcode identifies the product exactly but says nothing about condition, and condition is usually the biggest factor in resale value. Expect a wider range from a barcode than from a clear photo, and add a note about condition to narrow it.
Why does my barcode return nothing useful?
Store-printed labels, older collectibles and anything handmade have no universal product code, and many vintage items pre-date barcodes entirely. For those, photograph the item or describe it instead.
Does a barcode tell me what a shop paid for it?
No. A barcode is just an identifier. What you get here is what the item resells for second hand, which is usually well below both the retail price and what a shop paid at wholesale.