Best Link-in-Bio Tools for Creators in 2026 (Pricing & Fees Compared)

Every social profile gives you one link (or a small handful) to send followers somewhere that matters. A link-in-bio tool turns that single slot into a mini homepage: your latest video, your newsletter signup, your products, your booking calendar — all behind one URL. The category looks simple, but the pricing is not: some tools are free until you sell something, at which point they take a double-digit cut of every sale.

This guide compares six link-in-bio tools with every pricing and feature claim drawn from official vendor pages or cited third-party sources captured on 2026-09-20. Exact dollar figures live in the comparison table; the body text sticks to structure and percentages so nothing here goes stale.

Disclosure: this article contains no affiliate links. Every pricing and feature figure below is drawn from official vendor pages or cited third-party sources captured on 2026-09-20, and the full dataset sits behind this page’s comparison table.

The six tools at a glance

Prices & features last verified: 2026-10-01 · dataset v2 · methodology

1. Linktree — best overall link-in-bio tool

Linktree invented the category and still defines it. The free plan is genuinely functional: unlimited links, basic click analytics, social icons and embeds, a unique QR code, and a linktr.ee/username address, with no credit card required and no expiration. For a creator who just needs “everything I make, one link,” the free tier is the whole product.

Paid tiers — Starter, Pro, and Premium, each available monthly or annually — unlock the branding and monetization layer: removing Linktree branding, custom button styles and video link previews, link scheduling, email and phone number collection, Instagram DM automation on Pro, and custom-domain options on higher tiers — Linktree has changed custom-domain support over time, so check the current pricing page. The pricing to note is not the subscription but the seller fee on digital products sold through Linktree’s own checkout: 12% on the free plan, 9% on Starter and Pro, and 0% on Premium. That structure means the free plan is free only until you sell; a creator moving real product volume should compare the fee cost against upgrading.

One more thing to know: Linktree raised prices across all three paid tiers in November 2025, so older reviews quoting the previous rates are out of date. Check the current figures on the official pricing page. Official site: linktree.com.

2. Beacons — best free all-in-one for creators

Beacons started as a link-in-bio tool and grew into a creator business platform, and its free plan reflects that ambition: unlimited links, a customizable media kit for brand deals, a store app, and email marketing with a monthly send allowance — all documented on Beacons’ official help center. You can even run up to five link-in-bio pages on the free tier.

The catch is the same shape as Linktree’s: the free plan and the entry-level Creator plan both carry a 9% transaction fee on sales (invoices are the exception at 0%). The fee drops to 0% on Creator Plus, which also adds unlimited email sends, memberships, buy-now-pay-later options, and logo removal. The top Creator Max tier is aimed at brands and agencies, with white-glove support and a physical NFC card among its perks.

Beacons makes the most sense for creators who want one account to cover links, selling, email, and media kits instead of stitching four tools together. If you only need links, Linktree is simpler; if you need the suite, Beacons’ free tier is the most generous starting point in this roundup. Official pricing documentation: Beacons help center.

3. Stan Store — best link in bio for selling

Stan Store is built around a different premise: your bio link is a storefront, not a link list. There is no free plan — just a 14-day trial — and two paid tiers, an entry Creator tier and a Creator Pro tier with email marketing, sales funnels, discount codes, upsells, payment plans, and affiliate commission tools. What justifies the subscription-first model is the fee structure: Stan Store charges no platform transaction fees, so you keep the full sale amount minus your payment processor’s standard rates.

The feature set reads like a mini-Kajabi for the bio link: digital products, courses with a built-in course builder, memberships and subscriptions, 1:1 booking calendars, and email list building. That makes it the natural pick for coaches, consultants, and course creators whose bio link exists to sell. The tradeoffs are real, though: it is the priciest entry point on this list, customization is more limited than Beacons’, there is no physical-product support, and you are renting rather than owning — cancel the subscription and the store goes with it.

If your content already sells and you want the bio link to close the sale, Stan Store’s 0% platform fee can easily beat a “free” tool taking 9–12% per transaction. Official pricing is documented in Stan Store’s help center.

4. Carrd — best budget pick for a custom-domain page

Carrd is not really a link-in-bio tool — it is a one-page website builder — but that is exactly why it belongs here. For less per year than most competitors charge per month, you get a fast, fully customizable single page on your own domain, which many creators prefer to a linktr.ee subdomain once their brand matters.

The structure: a permanent free plan (up to three sites on a carrd.co subdomain with a small “Made with Carrd” badge), then three Pro tiers billed annually — no monthly option. The middle tier is the sweet spot: it unlocks custom domains with automatic SSL, working forms with email-platform integrations, embeds, and analytics. The top tier adds advanced forms, password protection, and Stripe Checkout inside forms. Carrd takes no transaction fees on anything.

The limitation is architectural: every Carrd site is one page. It cannot be a store, a blog, or a multi-page site — payment widgets embed, but there is no cart. For a link hub, a waitlist page, or a digital business card on your own domain, though, nothing else in this guide touches its price-to-quality ratio. See our best landing page builders guide for the bigger-picture context, and check Carrd’s official pricing page for current tier figures.

5. Milkshake — best free mobile-first option

Milkshake takes a different design approach from everything else here: instead of a link list, you build swipeable cards — like Instagram Stories — entirely from a mobile app. The result looks more like a tiny mobile website than a bio link page, which suits visual creators whose audience lives on their phones.

Per Milkshake’s own FAQ, the app is completely free to use, with paid Lite, Pro, and Pro+ tiers for extras: removing Milkshake branding, contact forms, advanced analytics, and — on Pro+ — connecting your own custom domain. Notably, the Sell Card works on every plan including free: you can sell digital files with Stripe handling payment and instant delivery, and upgrading simply lowers the per-sale fee. That makes Milkshake one of the cheapest ways to start selling from a bio link.

The tradeoffs: editing is app-based with no desktop dashboard, analytics are basic, and there are no real integrations beyond Instagram and YouTube. It is a design-forward free starting point, not a growth platform — plan to graduate to Beacons or Linktree when you need email capture, scheduling, and serious analytics. Official FAQ: milkshake.app/faqs.

6. Shorby — best for messenger and ad-retargeting workflows

Shorby aims at a narrower use case than the rest of this list: bio links wired into messaging apps and advertising. Its signature features are Smart Pages (rich bio pages with unlimited links), direct messenger buttons for WhatsApp, Telegram, and Messenger, and integrations with ad platforms for retargeting pixels — the idea being that your bio link feeds your ad funnel, not just your content.

There is no free plan, only a short free trial, and three paid tiers. The entry tier includes a handful of Smart Pages with unlimited links per page, messenger buttons, and click analytics; the middle tier expands to dozens of Smart Pages, adds multiple ad-platform integrations, Google Analytics pixels, and custom domains; the top agency tier scales all of that for teams.

For most creators, Shorby is over-specialized — Linktree or Beacons cover the same basics for less or free. It earns its place for the specific creator who runs paid traffic to their profile and wants the bio link instrumented like a landing page, with retargeting and messenger capture built in. Check Shorby’s official pricing page for current tiers before committing, since it is the only tool here with no usable free tier to fall back on.

How this guide was researched

Link-in-bio pricing changes frequently — Linktree repriced all paid tiers in late 2025 — so this guide was built to resist going stale:

1. Official pages first — Beacons’ help-center pricing documentation and Milkshake’s official FAQ were read directly; Stan Store’s help center and Linktree’s official pricing were used via dated third-party captures that cite them.
2. Seller fees separated from subscriptions — the per-sale cut is the number that actually determines cost for sellers, so it is called out for every tool that takes one.
3. Free-plan reality check — “free” was scored on what you can actually do: links, analytics, selling, and email, not just the existence of a tier.
4. Fit over features — a link hub, a storefront, and a one-page site solve different problems; each tool is judged against the job it is actually for.
5. Recency guard — where older reviews quote superseded prices (notably Linktree’s pre-November-2025 rates), the newer figures are used and the change is flagged.

Frequently asked questions

Sources & verification

Pricing and feature claims above were verified in September 2026 from:

• Linktree — tier structure (Free, Starter, Pro, Premium), monthly/annual billing, and seller fees (12% Free, 9% Starter/Pro, 0% Premium) via a September 2026 third-party capture verified against Linktree’s official pricing and fee documentation; November 2025 price increase documented across multiple independent sources.
• Beacons — official help-center pricing documentation: Free plan (unlimited links, media kit, 9% transaction fee, 50 email sends, 5 link-in-bio pages), Creator, Creator Plus (0% transaction fee), and Creator Max tiers.
• Stan Store — Creator and Creator Pro tiers, 0% platform transaction fees, and 14-day trial via Stan Store’s official help center (captured August 2026 by an independent source); feature set corroborated across multiple creator-economy publications.
• Carrd — free plan (3 sites, carrd.co subdomain), three annually billed Pro tiers, custom domains and forms from the middle tier, Stripe Checkout on the top tier, and no transaction fees, corroborated across multiple independent sources citing carrd.co.
• Milkshake — official FAQ: completely free to use; Lite, Pro, and Pro+ paid tiers (branding removal, contact forms, advanced analytics, custom domains on Pro+); Sell Card with Stripe payments available on every plan including free.
• Shorby — Rocket, Pro, and Agency tiers, 5-day free trial, Smart Page limits, messenger buttons, ad-platform integrations, and custom domains on higher tiers, via a May 2026 capture of Shorby’s official pricing page.

Pair this guide with our best landing page builders roundup for the top-of-funnel side, and the best online course platforms guide if your bio link exists to sell courses.