Can I print shipping labels without a thermal printer?

Yes. A shipping label is just a PDF — any inkjet or laser printer that takes A4 paper can print it. The only thing you lose is the peel-and-stick backing, so you tape or glue the cut label to the parcel instead. Couriers scan the barcode, not the paper.

How many 4×6 labels fit on one A4 sheet?

Four, in a 2×2 grid. A4 is 210×297 mm and four 4×6 labels laid two across and two down need 203×305 mm, so they land at about 95% of full size — a shrink you cannot see and a scanner does not care about.

Will the barcode still scan after shrinking to 95%?

Yes. Courier barcodes carry a wide tolerance, and a laser or inkjet printer resolves at 600 DPI or more against a thermal printer’s 203 DPI — so even at 95% the printed bars are sharper than a thermal label. What breaks a barcode is “Fit to page” on a full A4 PDF, which shrinks the label to roughly a quarter of its size.

Do I need to buy special label paper?

No. Plain A4 paper works — cut the labels out and tape them on. If you want peel-and-stick, A4 self-adhesive sheets are sold in most stationery shops and go through a normal printer, but they are optional.

Does this work for Flipkart and Amazon both?

Yes. Drop either marketplace’s label PDF in, tick “4 labels per A4 sheet”, and you get the same 2×2 sheet. The tool finds the label region on each page itself, so you do not tell it which marketplace you are on.

Where do the tax invoices go?

They stay separate. The labels PDF is only labels; the invoices come as their own A4 download, already the right size for paper. That way you never waste a label slot on an invoice.

Printing

Print 4 shipping labels on one A4 sheet

Most small sellers do not own a thermal printer, and do not need one. CropSheet lays four 4×6 labels onto a single A4 page so you can print a whole batch on the printer already on your desk, cut them apart, and tape them on.

You do not need a thermal printer

A shipping label is a PDF. Any printer that takes A4 can print it. A thermal printer is convenient — no ink, peel-and-stick backing, one label per press — but it is a ₹6,000–₹12,000 purchase that earns its keep somewhere north of thirty parcels a day. Below that, plain paper and a pair of scissors is the honest answer.

What actually goes wrong without one is not the printer. It is that Flipkart and Amazon hand you a full A4 PDF with the 4×6 label sitting in one corner and a tax invoice filling the rest. Print that page as-is and you waste a whole sheet per parcel — or you reach for “Fit to page”, which shrinks the label to about a quarter of its intended size and stops the barcode scanning.

Four labels, one sheet

Tick “4 labels per A4 sheet” before you download, and instead of one 4×6 page per label you get A4 pages carrying a 2×2 grid. Twelve orders become three sheets rather than twelve.

Setting	What you get	Sheets for 12 orders
Default (off)	One 4×6 page per label	12 pages of 4×6 stock
4 per A4 (on)	2×2 grid on A4	3 sheets of A4

A 12 mm margin runs around the grid so a blade or scissors has something to follow, and the labels sit flush against each other in the middle — one straight cut down and one across.

The labels print at about 95%, and they have to. Two 6-inch labels stacked are 305 mm tall; an A4 sheet is 297 mm. There is no arrangement that fits four at exactly 100%, so anything claiming otherwise is either cropping something off or lying about the paper. The 5% is invisible and covered below.

How to do it

Download the label PDF from Flipkart Seller Hub or Amazon Seller Central as you normally would.
Open the Flipkart or Amazon cropper and drop the file in. Nothing is uploaded — it is processed in your browser.
Tick 4 labels per A4 sheet.
Optionally tick Sort labels by SKU so identical items print together and you pack one shelf at a time.
Click Download labels — you get labels-a4.pdf.
Print it at 100% scale on A4, then cut along the grid.

Print settings that matter

Paper size: A4.
Scale: 100%, or “Actual size”. Never “Fit to page” or “Shrink to fit” — the sheet is already sized for A4, and fitting it again shrinks it a second time.
Margins: None, or the minimum your printer allows. The 12 mm cutting margin is already in the file.
Orientation: Portrait.
Colour: Black and white is fine and uses less ink. Labels are monochrome anyway.

Print one sheet, scan a barcode off it with any phone scanner app, and only then run the batch. That thirty-second check has saved more parcels than any setting on this page.

Will the barcode still scan?

Yes, and the arithmetic is reassuring. Courier barcodes are specified with real tolerance for print variation, and an ordinary laser or inkjet printer resolves at 600–1200 DPI against a thermal printer’s 203 DPI. Even shrunk to 95%, the bars you print on paper are physically crisper than the ones on a thermal label.

The thing that genuinely breaks scanning is printing the raw A4 marketplace PDF with “Fit to page”, which lands the label at roughly 25% of its size. That is a different problem, and it is the one this tool exists to solve. See the exact label dimensions if you want the numbers.

Cutting and sticking

Plain paper labels need to be attached. In rough order of how well they hold up:

Clear tape over the whole label — cheapest, and the tape doubles as waterproofing. Keep tape off the barcode if your courier uses a laser scanner; a glossy strip can scatter the beam. Camera-based scanners do not care.
Glue stick around the edges — fine for dry storage, poor in monsoon.
A4 self-adhesive sheets — peel-and-stick, goes through a normal printer, about ₹4–₹8 a sheet. This is the closest you get to a thermal label without buying one.

Flipkart and Amazon both

The sheet layout is marketplace-independent — it happens after the label has been cropped out of the page, so it works identically for Flipkart’s combined label-and-invoice A4 and Amazon’s full-page label images. The invoices are never mixed into the sheet; they come as a separate A4 PDF you print on paper for the parcel.

If you also want the order data as a spreadsheet — SKUs, quantities, addresses, GST — the same file gives you a Flipkart order Excel or an Amazon order Excel from the same drop.

Frequently asked questions

Can I print shipping labels without a thermal printer?: Yes. A shipping label is just a PDF — any inkjet or laser printer that takes A4 paper can print it. The only thing you lose is the peel-and-stick backing, so you tape or glue the cut label to the parcel instead. Couriers scan the barcode, not the paper.
How many 4×6 labels fit on one A4 sheet?: Four, in a 2×2 grid. A4 is 210×297 mm and four 4×6 labels laid two across and two down need 203×305 mm, so they land at about 95% of full size — a shrink you cannot see and a scanner does not care about.
Will the barcode still scan after shrinking to 95%?: Yes. Courier barcodes carry a wide tolerance, and a laser or inkjet printer resolves at 600 DPI or more against a thermal printer’s 203 DPI — so even at 95% the printed bars are sharper than a thermal label. What breaks a barcode is “Fit to page” on a full A4 PDF, which shrinks the label to roughly a quarter of its size.
Do I need to buy special label paper?: No. Plain A4 paper works — cut the labels out and tape them on. If you want peel-and-stick, A4 self-adhesive sheets are sold in most stationery shops and go through a normal printer, but they are optional.
Does this work for Flipkart and Amazon both?: Yes. Drop either marketplace’s label PDF in, tick “4 labels per A4 sheet”, and you get the same 2×2 sheet. The tool finds the label region on each page itself, so you do not tell it which marketplace you are on.
Where do the tax invoices go?: They stay separate. The labels PDF is only labels; the invoices come as their own A4 download, already the right size for paper. That way you never waste a label slot on an invoice.

Four labels to a sheet, free, without uploading your file anywhere.

Open the label cropper