Barcodes made items machine-readable. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) makes them machine-readable without being seen. The two are not rivals - they are two generations of the same idea, and the best systems use both.
How identification evolved
- Manual entry - item numbers written and typed by hand. Slow and error-prone.
- 1D barcodes (1970s onward) - one number per scan, in line of sight, one item at a time.
- 2D barcodes (1990s onward) - much more data in less space; readable by phones.
- Passive UHF RFID (2000s onward) - many tags read at once by radio, through packaging, from metres away, each with a unique serial number.
- Connected identity (today) - barcodes, QR codes and RFID linked to cloud data, IoT sensors and AI analytics.
A short history of RFID
RFID's roots go back to radar and "identify friend or foe" systems in the 1940s. In 1973 Mario Cardullo received a patent for a passive radio tag with memory. Through the 1980s and 1990s RFID was used for animal tracking, access cards and toll collection. In 1999 the Auto-ID Center at MIT developed the idea of the Electronic Product Code (EPC) - a unique serial number for every item - and in 2004 the EPC Gen2 UHF standard was ratified, later adopted as ISO/IEC 18000-63. Today passive UHF RFID is known as RAIN RFID, and is used by retailers, logistics companies, manufacturers and governments worldwide. In India, FASTag on every vehicle has made RFID part of daily life. Read the full story - and why Mario Cardullo and Charles Walton are called the father of RFID - in Who invented RFID?
Barcode vs RFID at a glance
| Barcode | RFID | |
|---|---|---|
| How it is read | Optically - must be seen | By radio - no line of sight |
| Items per read | One at a time | Hundreds per second |
| Read distance | Centimetres to a few metres | Up to many metres (UHF) |
| Data | Fixed once printed | Can be written and updated |
| Identity | Usually one number per product type | Unique serial number per item |
| Cost per label | Very low | Higher (inlay inside the label) |
| Best for | Billing, documents, low-cost items | Stock counts, high-value items, automation |
Why the best systems use both
An RFID label is usually printed with a barcode too. The barcode works with every scanner and partner; the RFID chip enables fast counts, gates and automation. RFID printers print the barcode and encode the chip in one pass. Jewellery stores, for example, keep a barcode on each tag for billing and use RFID to audit the whole showroom in minutes.
Continue learning
Start with the free Indian RFID Academy (50 chapters), or join the Certified RFID Specialist course after the barcode course.