Do Canva QR codes expire?

No. Canva's QR code app builds a static code, which means your URL sits inside the black and white squares themselves. No server sits between the scan and the destination, so there is nothing anyone can turn off. Print it on a menu in 2026 and it will still scan in 2036, assuming the paper lasts that long.

That is the good news. The catch arrives later, and it catches people who assumed a QR code was a QR code.

Why people ask this in the first place

Most of the worry comes from somewhere else. Plenty of QR platforms hand you a code during a free trial, then stop answering for it when the trial ends, and your printed code starts landing on a page asking for a card. If you read one of those stories before opening Canva, you would reasonably wonder whether your poster has a timer on it.

It does not. Canva is a design tool, not a redirect service. It writes your link into the pattern and steps away.

What you give up instead

A static code cannot be edited. Whatever URL you typed into Canva is welded into the artwork.

Change your menu link, move a booking page, retire a campaign URL, or notice a typo after the print run, and the fix is a reprint. Not a settings change: a reprint. That is the part that costs money, and it usually surfaces at the worst moment, after the flyers are boxed.

You also get no data. A static code cannot count scans, so you never learn whether the poster in the window outperformed the one by the till, or whether anyone scanned either. The code works. You simply cannot see it working.

When a Canva code is the right answer

Static is genuinely better in three situations:

• The destination will never change. Your Wi-Fi password, a vCard, a link to a homepage you control.
• The code needs to outlive any subscription. Engraved signage, product packaging with a decade-long shelf life, anything you cannot revisit.
• You do not care about numbers. A one-off event where scans tell you nothing you will act on.

In those cases, take the free code and forget about it. Nothing about a dynamic code would improve your week.

When it is the wrong answer

Flip any of the above and static becomes expensive:

• The link changes seasonally, or you are not certain of it yet.
• You printed enough copies that reprinting hurts.
• You want to know which placement worked before spending again.
• You need to point the same code at different content later.

A dynamic code solves these by encoding a short link that redirects. You change the destination, the printed pattern stays identical, and every scan is counted. The trade is the one at the top of this article: a dynamic code depends on a service continuing to answer, so it lasts as long as the plan behind it.

Both of ours are honest about which is which. Our free static generator makes the same kind of permanent code Canva does, with no account. Dynamic codes on the free plan redirect for 12 months from the day you make them; on a paid plan, for as long as the subscription runs plus 30 days after a cancellation. That number is on the pricing page rather than in clause 14, and we email you 30 days, 7 days and on the day before a code stops.

How to tell which kind you have

Scan your own code and look at the address bar.

If the URL that appears is your actual destination, the code is static. The link came out of the pattern. If it is a short link on some platform's domain that then bounces you onward, it is dynamic, and it depends on that platform.

Do this before a print run, not after. Why QR codes die covers what else to check first, and dynamic vs static walks through the choice in more detail.

The short version

Canva codes do not expire, because they cannot. They also cannot be edited or measured. If your link is settled and you want a code that outlives every subscription including ours, that is the correct tool and you should use it. If the destination might move, or you want to know what happened, print something you can change.