About

Origin

scancity.net came to be after someone reached out to me asking how to "fix" a QR code they had generated a week prior, after it started directing people who scanned it to $15/month paywall.

That kind of stuff just irks me. So I built this.

Goal

The overarching goal for scancity.net is to provide reliable, fast QR codes at a price that is reasonable, upfront, and transparent. The systems behind scancity.net operate 24x7x365 and are designed to be extremely reliable and scale more or less 1-to-1 with usage, so the pricing reflects only that without being greedy.

$1/yr is all that is needed to have a dynamic QR code that works reliably and can be updated instantly down the line.

The entire history of scans for each QR code are kept, so there's no need to pay for analytics up front, they can be enabled at any time for $1 per 1000 scans.

Tech

scancity.net is built with Python, Django, PostgreSQL, and is fronted by a distributed edge compute layer on Fastly.

Only generating and updating QR codes requires the backend to be online. When users scan Dynamic QR codes, the redirect and analytics are handled by the edge compute layer. This ensures reliable operation of your QR codes once they are live "in the wild".

Maintainer

scancity.net is maintained by me, Ee Durbin. I've been doing web tech for a lil while and put the experience I built maintaining systems like PyPI over the last 12+ years. You can find me on GitHub or contact me at scancity@durbin.ee.