Bitly alternatives: six link shorteners compared on price, free plans and revenue data

For SaaS teams, the best Bitly alternative is TrackRev, because it shows which payment each link earned alongside the click count.

For the lowest price, Short.io's paid plans start at $5 a month and its free plan connects 5 custom domains, while Bitly sells your own domain from Growth at $29 a month billed yearly.

Rebrandly is the closest swap, and Dub and YOURLS offer open-source code.

We built TrackRev for exactly this: affiliate software for indie hackers and small SaaS teams, with link tracking and revenue attribution built in, 0% fees and no cap on tracked revenue.

Bitly's figures come from its pricing page and help center, and TrackRev's come from our own pricing page.

Sources: bitly.com/pages

How do Bitly alternatives compare on price and free plans?

Short.io, Rebrandly and Dub each include a custom domain on a free plan, and Bitly does not.

The three free plans differ in size: 5 domains and 1,000 links at Short.io, 1 domain and 10 links at Rebrandly, and 3 domains and 25 links at Dub.

A custom domain on Bitly starts at Growth, so the same step costs $29 a month billed yearly there and $0 at the three alternatives in October 2026.

Why do people leave Bitly?

Bitly is a link shortener whose pricing page puts its limits where growing teams hit them.

Your own domain needs Growth, and click and scan history lasts 30 days on Core, 4 months on Growth and 1 year on Premium ($199 billed yearly, $300 monthly), with none on the free plan.

No plan lists conversion tracking, so Bitly reports how often a link opened and nothing about what the visitor did next.

One branded domain costs $420 over 12 months on Growth billed monthly, against $216 on Short.io Pro at $18 and $60 on Short.io Hobby at $5. Three free plans connect a domain for $0, with link allowances that differ.

Why do free links show an ad, and do branded domains help?

Free links now carry an ad. Bitly's help article, updated January 12, 2026, says free accounts send visitors through an interstitial page with a destination preview and an ad, and that a paid plan removes it.

The other reason is who owns the domain.

Google's goo.gl shows the extreme case: its developer blog says Google stopped taking new links in 2018, and on August 25, 2025 it switched off the links that had shown no activity in late 2024.

A link on a domain you own turns a vendor decision into a DNS edit, and what a branded short link is covers how the DNS side works.

Bitly's branded links page promises 2.3x your click-throughs when you replace bit.ly with your own domain, and it shows no test behind the number.

Split one send at random, give half the recipients links on your domain and half a bit.ly link, and keep the copy and offer identical.

Then compare sign-ups or paid conversions per 1,000 delivered, because a familiar domain can attract curious clicks that never buy.

Sources: support.bitly.com/hc · bitly.com/pages

How do Bitly and Rebrandly compare?

Bitly and Rebrandly are close on price, and the two meter different things: Bitly caps links created and leaves clicks unlimited, while Rebrandly caps how many clicks get detailed data.

A link that draws 40,000 clicks in a month passes Rebrandly Professional's 25,000-click allowance by 15,000, while the same traffic costs Bitly nothing extra.

A team that creates links in volume has the reverse problem, since Growth stops at 500 links a month and Professional at 1,500. Rebrandly's pricing page has the full limits.

Sources: rebrandly.com/pricing

How do plan limits compare side by side?

What happens to QR codes when you leave Bitly?

Bitly counts QR codes against a monthly allowance of 2 on Free, 5 on Core, 10 on Growth and 200 on Premium.

Its downgrade article calls each code a scannable form of a short link, so a printed code that points at a bit.ly link cannot move to another tool, while one on your own domain can.

Rebrandly allows 10 codes a month on Free, watermarked, and 250 on Essentials. Short.io lists QR codes with custom colors and logos on every plan.

A static code from TrackRev's free QR code generator encodes your URL directly, so it needs no account and its destination cannot change after printing; dynamic vs static QR codes covers that trade.

Does the redirect status code matter?

A short link answers with an HTTP status code, and the two common choices behave differently for search.

MDN says a 301 makes search engines attribute links to the original URL to the destination, passing its ranking along, while a 302 transfers no SEO value. For links shared in email and social posts the code makes little difference.

It matters for short links that other sites cite. Short.io lists a 301 option, Pretty Links offers 301, 302 and 307 per link, and TrackRev answers every click with a 302.

Which six alternatives are worth testing?

1. Is TrackRev the pick for links tied to revenue?

TrackRev is an affiliate platform for indie hackers and small teams, with link tracking and revenue attribution built in.

We built TrackRev links to record each click on the server, and a paid plan matches later payments from Stripe, Paddle Billing, Polar, Lemon Squeezy, Creem and Dodo Payments to that click under last-touch, first-touch or linear credit.

Renewals credit the original click, so a payment billed with no page view still counts. The free plan allows 50 links and 1,000 events a month and shows no revenue.

What does TrackRev cost compared with Bitly?

Indie is $29 a month and includes one custom domain, unlimited links and events, the revenue sync and the affiliate program.

TrackRev Growth is $299 a year and adds up to 10 workspaces, up to 10 tracked domains and unlimited team members. Over 12 months Indie's $348 matches Bitly Growth billed yearly and is $72 below Growth billed monthly ($420).

In our product, a custom domain needs one CNAME record pointing at cname.trackrev.io, and CSV imports take 500 rows per upload. Routing rules send visitors to different destinations by device and operating system.

2. Does Short.io have the largest free plan?

Short.io is a link platform which allows commercial use on its free plan, and the 1,000 branded links there are a lifetime total. Hobby adds country targeting and referrer hiding. Pro brings password protection, link expiration and link cloaking.

Team is $48 for city and region targeting, mobile deep links and a 99.9% uptime SLA, and Enterprise is $148 with single sign-on. Paid plans start with a 7-day trial, and yearly billing takes 17% off.

Conversions are capped at 50 a month on Free and 200 on Hobby.

Its conversion tracking passes a clid parameter through every short URL for third-party analytics to detect conversions, and its integrations page lists no Stripe, Paddle, Polar or Lemon Squeezy connection.

It has the lowest paid entry price of the hosted tools here, and Short.io vs TrackRev covers the rest.

Sources: short.io/pricing · docs.short.io/articles

3. Is Rebrandly the closest swap, with an enterprise tier?

Rebrandly is a link management platform which keeps Bitly's shape and lowers the domain price. Professional is the first plan with conversion tracking, link expiration, dynamic traffic routing and 50 password-protected links.

Growth is $69 to $99 billed yearly and adds mobile deep linking and 5 workspaces. Enterprise is a quote with SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning, SOC 2 Type 2 and 99.99% uptime.

4. Is Dub the open-source option with a free tier?

Dub is an open-source link platform whose free plan keeps 30 days of analytics, Pro a year and Business 3 years. Business, at $90, also adds A/B testing and event webhooks.

Per Dub's sales docs, conversion tracking also starts at Business and runs on an analytics script plus a server-side SDK.

The code is on GitHub, 99% under AGPLv3 and the rest under a commercial license in an /ee folder.

Dub fits teams that want to read or host the code, or to test link variants, and Dub.co vs TrackRev covers what a self-hosted copy leaves out.

Sources: dub.co/pricing · dub.co/docs

5. Is YOURLS the shortener to host yourself?

YOURLS is a set of PHP scripts that runs your own URL shortener under the MIT license, so the software costs nothing and your links and click data stay on your server.

Its site lists a developer API, bookmarklets, plugins, and stats with historical click reports, referrer tracking and visitor geolocation. You pay for hosting and a domain, and you own the upgrades and backups.

Kutt is the other MIT-licensed option, with custom domain support. It fits a team with a server and a developer to look after it, and anything past click stats comes from plugins you vet yourself.

6. Are Pretty Links the answer for outbound links on WordPress?

Pretty Links is a WordPress plugin, so its links live on your site's domain.

The free Lite version makes branded short links, offers 301, 302 and 307 redirects per link, logs clicks and unique clicks with referrer, browser and OS, filters bots, and imports or exports links as CSV.

Paid plans on its pricing page are Beginner for 1 site at $99.60 for the first year, Marketer for 2 sites at $149.60 and Super Affiliate for 5 sites at $199.60.

The page says renewals bill at full price, listed as $249, $374 and $499. It suits a content site whose links are affiliate links on WordPress.

Sources: prettylinks.com/pricing

When is Bitly still the better choice?

Bitly's Enterprise plan is a quote with multiple users and group permissions, SSO logins, 99.99% uptime, 2 years of click data and a dedicated customer success manager.

If procurement asks for those, Rebrandly Enterprise lists a comparable set, and Short.io offers a 99.9% uptime SLA on Team at $48 and SSO on Enterprise at $148.

Bitly also bundles landing pages, a mobile app and browser extensions, plus Bitly Assist, an AI helper that comes with Core.

How do you move off Bitly without breaking links?

Only links on a domain you control can move, since bit.ly belongs to Bitly. The order of the steps matters, because Bitly's downgrade article describes what lapses when a plan loses its custom domain.

• Check which domain your links use. If it is the complimentary domain that came with Growth, the article says Bitly does not renew its registration after a downgrade to a plan without a custom domain, and links on it stop working when the registration expires. Register a domain yourself before you leave.
• Rebuild your most-used slugs in the new tool. Short.io lists link import from other shorteners, and TrackRev keeps your slugs on a CSV import.
• Point the CNAME at the new tool once those slugs resolve, and do it before you cancel. After a downgrade, links on your own domain keep redirecting while DNS points at Bitly, but Bitly stops renewing the certificate and visitors then see a security warning.
• Leave bit.ly links where they are. The article says they keep working after a downgrade, but it was last updated April 15, 2024 and says nothing about the ad page its January 2026 article describes, so open one old link after you downgrade to check.

Sources: support.bitly.com/hc

Which alternative should you pick?

TrackRev paid plans start at $29 a month with no limit on tracked revenue and 0% fees on it (pricing). Best link tracking software for SaaS prices six tools at 40,000 clicks a month.