Is this real product data?

Yes — real grocery products from the Open Food Facts open database.

No. Open Food Facts' search API is fully key-less.

Who adds these products?

Real volunteer contributors scanning real barcodes worldwide.

Yes — free, no download, in your browser.

What is a barcode actually encoding?

A number, usually a GTIN, in a format developed by the GS1 standards organisation. A database lookup turns that number into a name and details.

A front-of-pack label that rates food from A (best) to E (worst) per 100 g. Points are added for fruit, vegetables, fibre, protein and healthy oils, and subtracted for energy, sugar, saturated fat and sodium.

Can the data be wrong?

Yes. Anyone can contribute, so entries can be incomplete or contain mistakes, and they can be edited later.

Open Food Facts Feed Screensaver

The Open Food Facts Feed screensaver streams real grocery products newly added to the open Open Food Facts database. It is free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.

How the Open Food Facts Feed screensaver works

The saver reads real newest products, sorted by creation date, from Open Food Facts' own API.

Each entry shows a real product name and, where reported, its real brand.

The pipeline refreshes the feed regularly as new products are added.

No key is required for this key-less public endpoint.

Barcodes, Nutri-Score and a volunteer food database

Open Food Facts is a not-for-profit, volunteer-run project that builds an open food products database. Anyone can contribute by scanning barcodes and uploading photos of products and their labels through the mobile app or a camera. The database is open data under the Open Database Licence, so anyone may reuse it for any purpose, commercial or not, if they credit the source and share improvements under similar terms.

The code attached to each product is its barcode number, a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) developed by GS1. GTINs are 8, 12, 13 or 14 digits long, covering formats such as EAN-13 and UPC-A. Each type of trade item gets its own GTIN, including different packaging configurations, rather than each individual unit, and the number is how the same product is matched across databases. The site also shows quality scores such as Nutri-Score, an A to E label from Santé publique France, and NOVA, a four-group scale of industrial processing proposed by researchers at the University of São Paulo.

Because anyone can contribute, quality varies. An entry may be missing fields or contain a typo, and a product added today is not necessarily new in shops; it may simply be the first time someone added it. The creation date shows when it entered the database, not when it was made.

A worked example

A real newly-added grocery product with its real brand name scrolls past exactly as catalogued by a contributor.

Settings & tips

Product names and brands are real, contributor-submitted Open Food Facts entries.
Accent recolours the ticker text.
Some entries omit a brand if the contributor didn't report one.

Frequently asked questions

Is this real product data?: Yes — real grocery products from the Open Food Facts open database.
Is a key needed?: No. Open Food Facts' search API is fully key-less.
Who adds these products?: Real volunteer contributors scanning real barcodes worldwide.
Is it free?: Yes — free, no download, in your browser.
What is a barcode actually encoding?: A number, usually a GTIN, in a format developed by the GS1 standards organisation. A database lookup turns that number into a name and details.
What is Nutri-Score?: A front-of-pack label that rates food from A (best) to E (worst) per 100 g. Points are added for fruit, vegetables, fibre, protein and healthy oils, and subtracted for energy, sugar, saturated fat and sodium.
Can the data be wrong?: Yes. Anyone can contribute, so entries can be incomplete or contain mistakes, and they can be edited later.

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