A headstone gives a name and two dates. For most people, that is the entire public record of a life. A memorial QR code plaque is an attempt to add the rest of it.
The idea is not complicated. A small engraved plaque carries a code. Someone points a phone camera at it. A page opens with photographs, stories, a voice note, whatever the family chose to put there. There is no app to download and no account to create. The camera does the work.
This guide covers what these plaques are, where you are allowed to put one in the UK, what they should cost, what makes one last twenty years and what makes one fail in two, and the questions worth asking any supplier before you hand over money.
What a memorial QR plaque actually is
There are two halves to it, and they are worth separating in your mind, because suppliers differ enormously on the second one.
The physical plaque. Usually a disc or small rectangle, between 30mm and 100mm across, made from stainless steel, anodised aluminium, brass or a ceramic composite. The code is laser-marked, etched or fired into the surface rather than printed on top of it. It fixes to a headstone, bench, urn, tree marker or picture frame.
The page behind it. A web page, hosted by the supplier, holding whatever the family uploads. Photographs, written memories, dates, an obituary, audio, video, a family tree. Some are locked to one editor. Some let anyone who scans the code add a memory of their own.
The plaque is the easy part. Any decent engraver can make one. The page is where the real differences live, and it is where most of the risk sits, because you are trusting a company to keep a website running for longer than most companies exist.
Where people put them
The obvious place is a headstone, but it is far from the most common in practice, partly because headstones carry the most restrictions.
- Headstones and lawn memorials. Fixed to the face or the base. Needs permission from the burial authority, and often a registered mason to fit it. See our guide on whether you can put a QR code on a headstone in the UK.
- Memorial benches. Very common, and generally far easier to get approved, because a bench plaque is already an expected feature.
- Urns and caskets kept at home. No permission needed at all. This is the most straightforward route by a distance.
- Picture frames and memory boxes. A plaque on the back of a framed photograph in the hallway.
- Memorial trees and gardens. On a stake, a stone or the tree marker itself.
- Order of service and funeral stationery. Printed rather than engraved, but the same code, so that people who attend the funeral can find the page later.
A point that surprises people: the plaque does not have to go anywhere public at all. A good number of families keep it at home and never fix it to anything in a cemetery. The code works the same.
Sizes and finishes
Size is a genuine functional decision, not only a cosmetic one. A code needs enough physical area for a phone camera to resolve it at the distance people will actually stand.
As a rough working rule, a QR code can be scanned from about ten times its own width. A 50mm plaque scans comfortably from around half a metre, which is right for a headstone or an urn that people approach closely. An 80mm plaque scans from roughly a metre, which suits a bench, where somebody may be sitting rather than crouching, or a memorial that is set back behind a kerb or a planted border.
On finish, the trade-off is between appearance and legibility:
- Brushed steel is the safe default. The brushed surface scatters light rather than reflecting it in a single sheet, which keeps glare down and contrast up. It reads as neutral against almost any stone.
- Matte black gives the highest contrast of the three and photographs well against pale granite or limestone. It is the most modern-looking option.
- Antique brass is the traditional choice and sits naturally against older stone and wooden benches. It will patinate over time, which most people want, but it is the finish most likely to throw glare in direct sun, so it rewards being fitted somewhere that is not south-facing and fully exposed.
Our own memorial plaque with memory page comes in 50mm and 80mm across all three finishes.
Permission: the part people skip
If the plaque is going on anything in a cemetery or churchyard, you almost certainly need permission, and you almost certainly cannot fit it yourself.
Council-run cemeteries require a memorial permit, applied for through a memorial mason, and the application must come with the consent of whoever holds the exclusive right of burial for that grave. Church of England churchyards work differently again, under regulations set by each diocese, and anything the regulations do not already allow needs a faculty from the diocesan court.
None of this is a reason not to do it. Plenty of authorities approve QR plaques without much difficulty, particularly small discreet ones on the base of an existing memorial. But finding out afterwards that it has to come off is a miserable experience, and it is entirely avoidable with one phone call. We have written both processes up in detail in the headstone rules guide and the churchyard regulations guide.
What it should cost
Plaques themselves generally run from around £40 for a small printed one to roughly £150 for a larger engraved metal plaque. Ours is £79.99.
The number that matters more is the ongoing one. Many suppliers charge an annual or monthly subscription to keep the page live, typically somewhere between £20 and £60 a year. Over twenty years, a £50 plaque with a £40 annual fee costs £850. A £90 plaque with no ongoing fee costs £90. The cheaper plaque is the more expensive product, by a factor of nine.
Ask the question directly, in writing, before you buy: is there any recurring charge, ever, and what happens to the page if it is not paid? Some suppliers take the page down. Some replace it with an advert. Neither is something you want to discover in five years. There is a full breakdown in our guide to what a QR memorial costs in the UK.
Questions worth asking any supplier
These are the ones that separate a product built to last from one built to sell:
- Is the code marked into the material or printed on top of it? Printed codes on outdoor plaques fade. Marked codes do not.
- What error correction level is the code? Higher levels keep scanning through dirt, scratches and lichen. This is a real engineering answer and a supplier who cannot give it has probably not thought about it.
- Is there any recurring fee? Covered above. The single most important question.
- Can I export everything? If you can download the photographs and text as files you control, the company failing becomes an inconvenience rather than a bereavement of its own.
- Who can edit the page, and who can add to it? Families fall out. Being able to control this matters more than it seems on day one.
- What happens if you go out of business? Ask it bluntly. The answer tells you a great deal. We answer it ourselves in how memorial QR codes work.
- Can the code be pointed somewhere else later? A code that permanently hard-codes one web address is a code that dies when that address does.
The mistake almost everyone makes
It is not choosing the wrong plaque. It is buying the plaque, fixing it, and then never filling the page.
This is completely understandable. You order it in the first raw weeks, when doing something practical feels like relief, and then the energy required to sit down with a box of photographs and write about someone you have lost turns out to be more than you have. The plaque goes up. The page stays half empty. Months pass.
Two things help. The first is not doing it alone: a pack of memory cards handed out at the funeral means twenty-five other people can add what they remember, and what comes back is almost always things the family never knew. The second is not doing it now: if you cannot face it, you can send us what you have and we will build it, and you can change every word of it later when you are ready.
The plaque will outlast all of us. There is no deadline on the page.