What Do the Number Codes on Fruit Stickers Actually Mean?

AI Fruit Identifier

Upload a clear photo of any fruit and our AI identifies the species, variety, nutrition, ripeness, and more — instantly and free.

This sticker thing is called PLU

There’s apparently over 1,400 of these little stickers in circulation at supermarkets. It’s called PLU, price look up number. Been around since 1990, it’s an international standard, not something one supermarket chain made up.

Four digits, usually starting with 3 or 4, means regular farming, the kind with fertiliser and pesticide. 4011 is banana, 4012 is orange, 4031 is apple. This is the most common one, most of the fruit at the shop is this.

Stick a 9 on the front of that four digit code and it becomes organic. 94011 is organic banana. Few different sources I checked all said the same thing on this one, so I’d call it reasonably solid.

The 8-prefix thing I actually checked

There’s a claim going round a lot that an 8 at the front means GMO. I went and checked this specifically, and it turns out that code was never actually put into use by shops. They dropped the whole thing back in 2015. Meaning even if it technically exists on paper, you basically won’t ever see it at a supermarket because nobody uses it. I went through every sticker on every piece of fruit in my house. Not one 8-prefix. Not a single one.

Then there’s a 0-prefix version going round too, saying it means loaded with pesticide, be careful. Also checked this. A 0-prefix is literally just the same as the regular four digit code, plenty of shops just don’t bother printing the zero. It’s not a warning label.

So those two I’m treating as wrong now, I wouldn’t pass them on to anyone.

The GMO banana thing is actually true though

One version of this claim says the only approved GMO fruit right now is a banana and it’s not even for sale yet. That part’s actually true and kind of interesting. There’s a banana called QCAV-4, engineered to resist a fungal disease that could otherwise wipe out banana crops. Got approved in 2024, first whole GMO fruit ever approved in Australia and New Zealand, first GMO banana approved anywhere in the world. But the uni that made it said they’ve got no plans to actually sell it right now, more like keeping it in reserve in case the disease situation gets bad. So you still can’t buy it anywhere.

Why tiny fruit like grapes don’t have stickers

Grapes, cherries, anything too small to stick a label on, the code just goes on the bag instead. Fair enough, nowhere to put it otherwise.

What I’d actually do with this now

If organic matters to you, look for the 9, that one checks out. The 8-means-GMO and 0-means-pesticide stuff, I wouldn’t believe either anymore, and I’d be a bit wary of anyone sharing that version. And the stickers themselves aren’t edible, obviously, which is a whole separate thing I now have to explain to my son given where he keeps putting them.