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 two 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. 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.

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, 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.

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 are valid for 18 months, and any 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. 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. 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.