Bitly vs Short.io: Pricing, Limits and Features Compared (2026)

Bitly vs Short.io comes down to volume and budget. Short.io is cheaper at every tier: unlimited links start at $18 a month, and the free plan includes five custom domains with no ads. Bitly is the better pick if you want polished QR codes, landing pages and a large integration catalog, but it caps link creation at 500 a month on its $29 Growth plan and shows ads on free links.

We compare plans, free tiers, custom domains, analytics, QR codes, API access and team costs, then cover what to check before you switch.

ShortPen is our product, so it appears only where it fills a gap the other two leave open.

Bitly vs Short.io at a glance

Short.io wins on price and domains, Bitly wins on product polish and integrations. Here is the side-by-side:

Both are a url shortener and link shortener built for url shortening: they take a long url and turn it into short links that are easier to share.

If you create a lot of links or manage several brands, Short.io costs a fraction of Bitly. If your campaigns lean on designed QR codes, landing pages and integrations with tools like HubSpot or Canva, Bitly gives you more in one dashboard.

Pricing compared

The two tools charge for different things. Bitly charges for how many links and QR codes you create each month. Short.io charges for domains, users and how many clicks you can see in your stats.

Bitly plans and prices

According to Bitly’s pricing page, the plans are:

• Free: $0, with ads. 5 links and 2 QR codes a month.

• Core: $10/month, sold only as an annual plan ($120/year). 100 links and 5 QR codes a month (Bitly’s core plan for light users who mainly want the recognized bit.ly domain).

• Growth: $29/month billed yearly, or $35 month to month. 500 links and 10 QR codes a month.

• Premium: $199/month billed yearly, or $300 month to month. 3,000 links and 200 QR codes a month.

• Enterprise: custom pricing.

Bitly’s premium plan is where more advanced features and longer analytics history start to become more meaningful for business users, while enterprise plans add larger-org controls.

Clicks and scans are unlimited on every plan, but monthly link volume is the real constraint because Bitly limits how many links per month you can create on each non-enterprise tier.

Short.io plans and prices

Short.io’s pricing page lists a free tier plus five plans, with 17% off when you pay yearly:

• Free: $0. 1,000 branded links in total, 5 custom domains. This free account free plan lets you connect a custom domain right away for branded short links.

• Hobby: $5/month. 2,500 branded links in total, 7 domains.

• Pro: $18/month. Unlimited links, 10 domains.

• Team: $48/month. Unlimited users, 50 domains.

• Enterprise: $148/month. Unlimited domains, SSO.

The Free and Hobby link limits apply over the account’s lifetime, not per month or links per month. Once you reach them, you need Pro or you have to delete old links.

What you actually pay at your volume

Plan names hide the real cost. This is what each tool charges at three common volumes:

This kind of links per month comparison is often what decides whether a free URL shortener or paid tool is a solid choice at your volume, and it matters more than list-style claims about the best URL shortener.

Watch the jumps between tiers. On Bitly, going past 500 links a month moves you from $29 to $199. On Short.io, adding a second user moves you from $18 to $48.

ShortPen doesn’t limit links on any plan, so the Free plan works at every volume. Plus ($23/month billed yearly) is for when you need full analytics history, more domains or a second user.

Free plans: ads, caps and what “tracked clicks” means

Short.io has the stronger free plan. Bitly’s free plan is a trial-sized version of the product with ads on your links.

Bitly’s free url shortener plan

You get 5 links, 2 QR codes and 3 custom back-halves a month on the free account, with very limited click tracking and creation caps. There is no custom domain, and Bitly’s comparison table lists no data history, country data or referrer data on Free.

Free links also come with ads. Bitly’s Help Center confirms that free accounts now show an interstitial page with a preview of the destination and an ad. Bitly announced the change to free users in early 2025, and it applies to links you created before it.

The only way to remove the page is a paid plan, and upgrading keeps your existing links so you do not need to migrate them just to remove the interstitial.

Short.io’s free plan

You get 5 custom domains, 1,000 branded links in total and 50,000 tracked clicks a month, with no ads. Commercial use is allowed.

The tracked-clicks number is often misread. Past 50,000 clicks in a month, your links keep redirecting. Short.io keeps collecting the data but stops showing it to you until you upgrade, as its pricing FAQ explains. Bitly’s own comparison post says Short.io limits how many clicks your content can receive, which is not how the limit works.

For comparison, ShortPen’s free plan has no ads, unlimited links and dynamic QR codes, unlimited tracked clicks and one custom domain.

Custom domains, short links, and branded links

Short.io gives you branded links from day one. Bitly makes you pay for them. That matters if you want branded short links that reinforce brand identity and usually look more trustworthy than a generic short URL.

Bitly includes one complimentary custom domain on Growth and Premium. A second domain requires Enterprise. Short.io includes 5 domains on Free, 10 on Pro and 50 on Team, so its custom domain support is simply broader on lower tiers.

A branded domain also affects whether your links get delivered. In a video from the Flexible agency, the team explains why they moved their SMS campaigns from bit.ly links to a Short.io subdomain: carriers and internet filters were blocking generic bit.ly links.

A short link on your own domain, matching the domain you send from, gets delivered and clicked more often, while also improving brand visibility and trust.

Owning the domain also protects you if you change tools. The links keep the same address, and you only point the DNS somewhere else.

ShortPen includes 1 custom domain on Free, 3 on Plus and 10 on Scale. Yearly paid plans also come with a free .link domain that ShortPen registers and connects for you.

Analytics and tracking

Both tools track clicks by location, device and referrer. The difference is how much you see on each plan and for how long.

What each tool tracks

Bitly gates its analytics by plan. For basic click tracking, referrer data starts on Core. Full country data starts on Growth. City-level and device data are only on Premium ($199/month yearly). Data history is 30 days on Core, 120 days on Growth, 1 year on Premium and 2 years on Enterprise.

Short.io shows countries, cities, devices, languages and referrers on every plan, within the tracked-clicks limit, which gives it more analytics depth on lower tiers than Bitly even if the reporting UI is weaker. It publishes data retention only for Enterprise, at 26 months.

The weak spot for Short.io is the dashboard. In its Bitly vs Short.io comparison, Efficient App calls Short.io’s reporting a mess, and the reviewer says in the accompanying video that he struggled to run proper analytics during a year on the tool.

What happens after the click

Clicks tell you who showed up, but for marketing campaigns they still don’t tell you who signed up or bought, and this is where the two tools differ most.

Bitly has no built-in conversion tracking. You add UTM parameters and read the results in Google Analytics 4 or another analytics tool. When built-in conversion data is limited, teams often pair link shorteners with marketing automation or CRM tools to track campaigns more fully.

Short.io does track conversions. When you enable it for a domain, Short.io adds a clid parameter to every click, and your conversion page sends that ID back to Short.io through its API or browser SDK. It works, but it needs a developer.

The free plan counts 50 conversions a month, Hobby 200, and Pro and above have no limit. GDPR compliance also matters here when the platform and connected tools handle user-level marketing data.

With ShortPen, you install the ShortPen Pixel on your site once, by pasting a script or through the Shopify app. Then you create events from the dashboard. A URL-triggered event, like a visit to your thank-you page, needs no code. On Shopify, Add to Cart, Checkout and Purchase are mapped for you. Each conversion is credited to the last ShortPen link the visitor clicked, with no attribution window.

The free plan includes 100 tracked conversions a month, so you can test the full setup before paying.

QR codes

Bitly has the better QR design tools. Short.io has no monthly QR limit.

Bitly’s QR codes come with logos, colors, frames and patterns, and you can download them as PNG, JPEG or SVG. The catch is the monthly allowance: 2 on Free, 5 on Core, 10 on Growth and 200 on Premium.

Short.io generates a QR code for any branded link on every plan, with custom colors and a logo. Since each code points to a short link, you can change the destination after printing.

Automatic qr code generation is common across link-management tools, including Rebrandly, so the real difference here is Bitly’s stronger design controls rather than QR availability itself.

Bitly’s comparison post describes Short.io’s QR codes as static, but Short.io’s own guide shows that you edit the destination through the link behind the code.

ShortPen’s QR codes are dynamic by default and unlimited on every plan. You can add colors, a logo and a frame, and scans are tracked separately from clicks.

API, integrations and teams

Short.io is easier on developers. Bitly is easier to plug into a marketing stack.

API and automation

Bitly’s API allows 1,000 requests a month on Free, 5,000 on Core, 25,000 on Growth and 50,000 on Premium, which matters if integrations are part of your team workflows. Webhooks are on Enterprise only.

In exchange, Bitly has a large integration marketplace, with connectors for tools like HubSpot, Shopify and Canva, plus integrations with AI assistants and marketing automation and CRM tools for campaign tracking used by marketing teams.

Short.io includes the API on every plan with a rate limit of 50 requests per second and no monthly request quota.

It connects to Zapier, Segment and Slack, and API access gives teams more full control over link shortening inside automated workflows. The one cap to watch is link automation: links created through the API or bulk upload count toward a separate limit (10,000 a year on Pro).

The cost of a second user

Adding a teammate is where both tools get expensive, and once link management becomes shared work, those multi-user limits turn into a real issue for marketing teams and large organizations.

Bitly offers multiple users, permissions and SSO only on Enterprise, which means a custom quote. Short.io keeps you at one user until Team, at $48 a month.

ShortPen’s Plus plan includes 2 users and 4 workspaces for $23 a month billed yearly. Scale includes 5 users and 10 workspaces for $55. Folders and tags are unlimited on every plan, including Free, so you can keep clients and campaigns apart without upgrading.

Switching tools: what to check before you migrate

Migrations fail on limits nobody mentions upfront. The YouTuber Craylor shared a clear example in his video about leaving Bitly. He moved about 650 links to Bitly’s Growth plan, and the imported links counted toward the 500-a-month cap. Support’s only offer to finish the job was Premium, at $300 a month. He waited two weeks for the limit to reset.

Before you move, check these points:

1. Connect your own custom domain first, so your branded short links stay on your own domain and survive any future switch.

2. Ask whether imported links count toward your monthly or lifetime limit.

3. Set a root redirect and a 404 redirect on the domain.

4. Test your most-clicked links before you change the DNS.

ShortPen has importers for both Bitly and Short.io that bring in destinations, slugs and titles. On paid plans, the team also migrates your links manually for free.

Bitly or Short.io: which should you choose?

Pick based on the limit you will hit first.

Choose Bitly if:

• Your campaigns rely on designed QR codes and custom landing pages; Bitly’s template-based pages track views, which helps with product, event, or multi-link campaigns.

• You need a wide integration catalog, from HubSpot to AI assistants.

• You are buying an enterprise contract with SSO, a 99.99% uptime commitment and a dedicated success manager.

Choose Short.io if:

• You need several branded domains, for clients or brands.

• You create hundreds of links a month on a small budget.

• Your developers want API access without monthly request quotas, or deep-linking that routes short links into mobile apps.

Neither fits well if:

• You need to prove signups or sales per link without writing code.

• You want a second seat without jumping to a much higher tier.

• You need long analytics history without paying for a top plan.

A third option if neither fits

If your bottleneck is in that last group, ShortPen (our product) is built around those gaps. It is a modestly full featured platform for marketers and agencies who need to see what happens after the click, with advanced features focused on post-click tracking rather than a broad enterprise suite.

What you get on every plan, including Free:

• Unlimited links and dynamic QR codes, with no ads on your links.

• Unlimited tracked clicks and scans.

• The ShortPen Pixel for post-click events, from 100 conversions a month on Free to 100,000 on Scale.

• Workspaces, plus unlimited folders and tags.

Plus costs $23/month billed yearly ($29 month to month) and adds unlimited analytics history, 3 domains, 2 users and full API access. Scale costs $55/month billed yearly ($69 month to month). Both come with a 14-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

ShortPen doesn’t do everything. It has no geo or device routing, no link-in-bio pages and no SSO. If you need those, Short.io or Bitly will serve you better, and users who want more features in those areas may prefer one of them.

If you want to compare for yourself, you can create a free ShortPen account and run it next to the tool you use today.

FAQ

Is Short.io cheaper than Bitly?

Yes. Short.io’s Pro plan costs $18 a month with unlimited links, while Bitly charges $29 a month (billed yearly) for 500 links. At 600 links a month, Bitly requires Premium at $199 a month billed yearly. The gap widens fast as your need for more links per month grows.

Why are there ads on my Bitly links?

Bitly shows an interstitial page with an ad on links created by free accounts. The change was announced in early 2025 and applies to older free links too. Upgrading to a paid plan removes it.

Does Short.io stop my links after 50,000 clicks?

No. On the free plan, links keep redirecting after 50,000 clicks in a month. You only lose access to the statistics for the extra clicks until you upgrade.

Can I use a custom domain on Bitly’s free plan?

No. Bitly includes one custom domain starting on Growth, at $29 a month billed yearly. Short.io and ShortPen both include custom domains on their free plans.

Is Bitly still worth it in 2026?

Bitly is a solid choice for enterprise marketing teams that need QR design, landing pages and a large integration catalog. For small teams, its monthly link caps, ads on free links and one-domain limit below Enterprise make it expensive.

What is a good alternative to Bitly and Short.io?

It depends on what you need. Short.io is the cheaper alternative to Bitly on the free tier for links and domains. ShortPen fits if you want unlimited links on a free plan and conversion tracking after the click without code.

Bitly vs Short.io is a choice between polish and price. Bitly is the safer pick for enterprise teams with QR-heavy campaigns, and Short.io is the cheaper option for small teams that prioritize branded short links and budget, while Bitly is the more full featured choice for large organizations.

If your real question is what happens after the click, or you need a second user without a big price jump, start a free ShortPen account and test it next to your current tool.

The built-in importers bring your Bitly or Short.io links across with their slugs and destinations, so existing social media posts and marketing campaigns keep working.