The Anti-Trap Pledge

The industry practice

A common pattern in this industry: create a QR code on a "free" plan, print it on menus, packaging or signage, and two weeks later the trial ends and the code goes dark. Owners discover it only when customers start complaining that the code "doesn't work". The printed material is already out in the world, and the only fix offered is a paid plan.

Our pledge, in full

Any code you create keeps resolving for as long as your account is alive · and a code that is still being scanned keeps it alive, whether or not you ever sign in. We measure the printed object, not your login. If your credit balance hits zero, a grace period kicks in first, and we warn you well before that. Worst case, a code pauses until you top up · never deleted, never recycled, never held hostage. Top up and it resumes instantly, same URL, same printed code. The one thing we do eventually close is an account that has gone completely silent: no sign-ins, no scans and no unexpired credits for six months. Even then we email you four times over the ninety days before it happens, and signing in once cancels the whole thing.

The industry practice

In early 2025, a leading link platform began showing interstitial ads on all free redirects. Every scan of an existing, already-printed code now detours through an ad page. Another popular QR generator starts injecting ads roughly two weeks after a code is created, once the owner has stopped checking.

Our pledge, in full

A scan on taproute is a 302 redirect at the edge: scan → destination, in ~10–40ms. We put nothing in that path · no ads, no upsells, no taproute page, on any account, trial or paid, today or in ten years. The only thing that can ever appear between a scan and its destination is a brand-preview check you turn on yourself, so the people scanning your code can see where they are going before they go. You control it, you can switch it off, and we earn nothing from it.

Amended 6 August 2026 · this clause used to say there was no page in between at all, which stopped being exactly true when we shipped an optional brand-preview check against QR phishing. Nothing about it is ours to sell and we never insert it · but the old wording said more than the product could back, so it has been narrowed to what is.

The industry practice

Incumbent pricing is built around subscriptions: monthly plans that quietly renew annually, cancellation flows buried three menus deep, and charges that reappear on card statements long after the QR campaign ended.

Our pledge, in full

taproute has no subscriptions at all. You buy a prepaid credit pack when you want one; 1 credit = 1 scan, with four published exceptions to what a scan costs: a smart page (blocks that adapt to each visitor) and a section page (a fully composed layout · including our Experience templates) each add 1 credit to a scan, so either bills 2 and both together bill 3, a scan that your webhooks receive adds 1 more, once, however many endpoints receive it, and on a Popin page what bills is a tap on something its author put on it (a link, a button, a social icon or a contact), at what the open used to cost, once per person per page every 30 minutes. Opening a Popin page, by a visit or a QR scan, never uses a tap. We keep no charging authority. There is nothing to renew, so we are structurally incapable of surprise-billing you. If you never come back, you never pay again, and your codes still resolve through your remaining balance.

Amended 29 August 2026 · we added Experience templates: premium art-directed pages built on the same composed layout a section page uses. Their scans bill exactly what a section page already bills, so the list of exceptions did not grow · but the rate card now uses a word this clause did not, and a reader should never need our internal naming to check a promise against it. The parenthetical now says the word. Two exceptions remain the whole list.

Amended 3 September 2026 · scan webhooks started billing, and this clause is where the exceptions to what a scan costs are counted, so the count moved from two to three. The surcharge is 1 credit on top of the scan, charged once per scan however many endpoints receive it: fanning one scan out to more places costs nothing extra, a retry is never billed, and a bot that never fires a webhook never pays it. Registering an endpoint stays free · only a delivered scan meters. Webhooks used to be described as included, which stayed true of the feature and stopped being true of the price, so the price is now written here where the promise is.

Amended 12 October 2026 · Popin pages stopped billing when they open and started billing when someone taps something on them, and this clause is where the exceptions to what a scan costs are counted, so the count moved from three to four. A tap on a link, button, social icon or contact costs what an open used to, once per person per page every 30 minutes, and most automated fetches are not counted. Each day a page uses the greater of its taps and its opens divided by 10 (rounded up), at its tap price (2 on a Smart or section page, 3 with both), so the first open of a day uses one tap and a page is never free hosting; a page with at least one tap for every 10 opens pays only for its taps. QR codes, short links and the links under a Popin handle still bill per scan, exactly as before.

Amended 14 October 2026 · opening a Popin page stopped using taps at all. On 12 October each day of a page used the greater of its taps and its opens divided by 10; that ratio is gone, so a tap on a link, button, social icon or contact is the only thing on a Popin page that bills, and a visit or a QR scan of the page never does. The count of exceptions stays at four, because the fourth was always the tap.

The industry practice

Everything an incumbent gives you, you are renting. Codes come in tiers (3, 50, 250), billed again every month for as long as you keep them: need 8 codes and you pay for 50, need 51 and you are in the next tier up, whether those codes are scanned once or a million times. Your own domain is rented back to you at $420–2,000 a year, every year, to unlock a feature that costs them almost nothing. Stop paying and it all goes away.

Our pledge, in full

You pay once. A code costs 1 credit the moment you create it (a fraction of a cent, the same for every account) and never costs you a creation credit again. A custom domain is a one-time slot, not a yearly fee: buy it once and keep it for as long as your account is alive. An Experience template unlocks once, at the moment you first publish it: picking one and drafting on it are free, and the unlock includes the section canvas it is built on, so the same page is never charged twice for its layout. There are no code tiers to cross and nothing recurs. After that you pay only for what actually happens: 1 credit per scan, 2 on a smart or section page, 3 on a page that is both, 1 extra credit on a scan your webhooks receive (once per scan, however many endpoints), on a Popin page a tap on something inside it rather than the page opening, and 5 credits each time you change a routing rule · added, edited or removed, with a save that changes nothing costing nothing. All of it published right on the rate card. Changing where a code points is still free and always will be, because that is the promise the product is sold on. Eight codes or eight thousand, the price per code is identical.

Amended 27 August 2026 · routing rules moved to per-change pricing, and this clause listed what you pay for after creation as though scans were all of it. That list was written when a rule was bought once and tuned for free; it did not become merely dated when the price changed, it became incomplete. The rule charge is now named here next to the scan charges, and so is the thing that did NOT change · repointing a code is free, which is the half of this clause that matters most.

Amended 29 August 2026 · Experience templates shipped as a one-time unlock, and this clause is the list of what you buy once, so leaving them out would have made that list quietly incomplete the way the rule charge once did. The unlock is charged when you first publish, never when you pick or draft, and it includes the section canvas beneath it · one page, one layout charge, never two.

Amended 3 September 2026 · a scan delivered to your webhooks now bills 1 credit on top of the scan, and this clause is the list of what you pay for after creation, so the line is added here rather than left to the rate card alone. Once per scan, however many endpoints receive it; a retry is never charged; registering an endpoint is still free. If your balance cannot cover the extra credit, the scan still redirects at the base rate and delivery simply waits for a top-up · a webhook can never be the reason a code stops resolving.

Amended 12 October 2026 · a Popin page now bills a tap on something inside it instead of the page opening, and this clause is the list of what you pay for after creation, so the change is named here too. A tap costs what the open used to, and each day a page uses the greater of its taps and its opens divided by 10 (rounded up) at that price, so the first open of a day uses one tap.

Amended 14 October 2026 · opening a Popin page no longer uses taps: what you pay for on a Popin page after creation is a tap on something inside it, and nothing else. The 12 October rule that made each day use the greater of its taps and its opens divided by 10 is retired.

The industry practice

Prepaid balances and unused quota commonly evaporate at the end of a billing cycle. And when you try to leave, your scan history and analytics are locked behind the plan you are trying to cancel.

Our pledge, in full

Credits you buy on taproute are valid for 18 months, and any taproute top-up, even the $15 pack, rolls your entire balance forward another 18 months from that day · so a customer who buys at all regularly never loses a credit. Popin is the one exception: Popin taps bought from 14 October 2026 are valid for 12 months, and buying the Popin package or a top-up rolls your entire balance forward to at least 12 months from that day, never shortening a date you already have; taps bought before then keep their 18 months. Cancel a subscription elsewhere and your links die that day; stop buying from us and you still have up to a year and a half on taproute, 12 months on Popin. We email you 30 days before anything expires; nothing vanishes silently. Why not forever? Because a credit is our promise to serve a scan at whatever it costs us then, and pricing a promise with no end date would mean charging you more today. And everything you create here is exportable at any time: codes, destinations, scan history, analytics. Leaving must always be easy; that is what keeps us honest about making you want to stay.

Amended 14 October 2026 · Popin moved to one package and a top-up, and taps bought in either from this day are valid for 12 months instead of 18. A Popin purchase rolls your balance forward to at least 12 months and never shortens a later date. Taps and credits bought before this day keep their 18 months, and a taproute purchase still rolls everything forward 18 months.