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# The Best Bitly Alternative for Creators (Honest Comparison)
- URL: https://lickity.click/blog/bitly-alternative/
- Published: 2026-10-26T02:50:07.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-26T02:50:07.000Z
- Description: Bitly wants $29/mo for a custom domain. I compare Bitly alternatives (Dub, Short.io, Rebrandly, LickityClick) on price, limits, and sponsor reports.
- Author: Dave Swift
- Tags: Comparisons, Link tracking

If you're a creator and you want your own branded short links, I don't think you should pay for Bitly. The plan that gives you a custom domain costs $348 a year, and it still caps how many links you can make.

I've tried most of the other options over the years, and none of them fit the way I work.

Quick disclosure before anything else: I built [LickityClick](https://lickity.click/?ref=lickity.click), one of the tools in this comparison. I use it for every link I share. They all run through my own domain, daveswift.link, and the click counts feed the scorecard I use to track my marketing. So yes, I'm biased. I'll still tell you where the other tools are better, because some of them are.

## Which Bitly alternative should you pick?

Here's the short version:

- **You want a free plan and don't need sponsor reports:** Short.io. Its free plan includes 1,000 branded links and custom domains.
- **You need conversion tracking or an affiliate/partner program:** Dub. It does things LickityClick doesn't.
- **You want the name everyone recognizes and your company is paying:** Bitly.
- **You just need a quick throwaway link:** TinyURL is fine.
- **You're a creator who puts links in YouTube descriptions, podcasts, or newsletters and wants to know what each link did:** LickityClick. That's the exact job I built it for.

## Bitly alternatives compared

Prices as of October 2026, taken from each company's public pricing page.

| Tool             | Free plan                                           | Cheapest plan with a custom domain              | New links on that plan |
| ---------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- | ---------------------- |
| **Bitly**        | 5 links/mo, no custom domain                        | Growth: $29/mo billed yearly ($348/yr)          | 500/mo                 |
| **Dub**          | 25 links/mo, 1,000 tracked events/mo                | Free (3 custom domains)                         | 25/mo                  |
| **Short.io**     | 1,000 branded links total, 50,000 tracked clicks/mo | Free (5 custom domains)                         | 1,000 total            |
| **Rebrandly**    | See their pricing page                              | Essentials: about $8-11/mo depending on billing | See their pricing page |
| **LickityClick** | 14-day free trial, no credit card                   | $7/mo or $70/yr (1 domain included)             | Unlimited              |

Sources: [Bitly pricing](https://bitly.com/pages/pricing?ref=lickity.click), [Dub pricing](https://dub.co/pricing/links?ref=lickity.click), [Short.io pricing](https://short.io/pricing?ref=lickity.click), [Rebrandly pricing](https://www.rebrandly.com/pricing?ref=lickity.click), [LickityClick pricing](https://lickity.click/pricing?ref=lickity.click).

A table can't show everything, so here's what each one is actually like.

## Bitly

Bitly is the link shortener most people have heard of. If you tell someone "it's a Bitly link," they know what you mean. That counts for something, especially at bigger companies where the marketing team already has an account.

**Where Bitly is better:** name recognition, and clicks are unlimited on every plan. The top plans also go further on data. Premium ($199/mo) gives you a year of click data plus city-level and device data.

**Where it falls short:** Bitly pricing gets expensive fast for one person. The free plan gives you 5 links a month. Core is $10/mo (billed yearly only, so $120 up front), and it gets you 100 links a month and 30 days of click data, with no custom domain. To get branded links on your own domain, you need Growth at $29/mo billed yearly. That's $348 a year for 500 links a month and 4 months of history.

Four months matters more than it sounds. A YouTube video keeps getting views for years, and the link in its description keeps getting clicks. If you want to know how a link from last year did (or show a sponsor), you want that number.

**Best for:** teams and companies that want the familiar name and have a budget for it.

## Dub

Dub is a modern link platform, and it's good. If you need more than click counts, I'd look at Dub first.

**Where Dub is better:** conversion tracking (seeing what people did after they clicked) and its partner/affiliate program product. If you run an affiliate program and need to track and pay partners, Dub does that and LickityClick doesn't. The free plan also includes 3 custom domains, which is generous.

**Where it falls short:** the free plan limits you to 25 new links a month, 1,000 tracked events a month, and 30 days of analytics. Pro is about $30/mo for 12,000 new links a year, 600K tracked events a year, and a year of analytics. A/B testing and conversion tracking are on Business, which is about $90/mo. That's a lot if you mainly want branded links and sponsor numbers.

**Best for:** businesses that care about conversions, and anyone running an affiliate or partner program.

## Short.io

Short.io is the one I'd point you to if your budget is zero.

**Where Short.io is better:** the free plan. You get 1,000 branded links total, 5 custom domains, and 50,000 tracked clicks a month without paying anything. Hobby is $5/mo for 2,500 links total and 100,000 tracked clicks a month. Pro is $18/mo for unlimited links and clicks and 10 domains.

**Where it falls short:** for creators, the free and Hobby limits are on total links, so they fill up over time if you make a new link for every video and sponsor. And if you need to send a sponsor a clean report of what their link did, that isn't what Short.io is built around. Paid plans have a 7-day trial.

**Best for:** people who want a free custom short URL on their own domain and don't need sponsor reporting.

## Rebrandly

Rebrandly has been around a long time as a branded link shortener, and it comes up a lot in "bitly vs rebrandly" comparisons. Its Essentials plan runs around $8-11/mo depending on how you're billed.

**Best for:** people who want a long-running branded link shortener. I haven't compared Rebrandly's link limits here, so check [their pricing page](https://www.rebrandly.com/pricing?ref=lickity.click) before you buy.

## TinyURL

If you're looking for a TinyURL alternative, you may have outgrown it. TinyURL is fine for a quick, throwaway link you'll never think about again. I wouldn't use it for links you need to track for a sponsor or keep on your own brand.

**Best for:** one-off links where you don't care about the numbers.

## LickityClick

This is the one I built, so read this section with that in mind.

![LickityClick home dashboard showing total links, clicks, campaigns and broken links](https://lickity.click/blog/content/images/2026/10/lickityclick-home.webp)

The LickityClick home dashboard. Demo account with simulated data.

LickityClick is a branded link shortener for creators. One plan, every feature: $7/month or $70/year, with a 14-day free trial and no credit card. You get unlimited links and unlimited clicks (the only limits are there to stop abuse), and one custom domain is included. Each extra domain is $2/month.

Here's what it does that matters for a creator:

- **Campaigns** group your links by sponsor deal, so all the links for one sponsor live together.
- **Shareable sponsor reports** give you a public report page you can send to a sponsor. They see what their links did without logging into anything.
- **YouTube integration** shows a video's views next to its link clicks, so you can see clicks divided by views. This is the main reason I'd call it a URL shortener for YouTube creators specifically.
- **A/B split links** split traffic between destinations and show click counts for each one.
- **Link health monitoring** emails you when a destination breaks, so a dead link doesn't sit in a video description for months.
- **QR codes**, plus a **CLI, REST API, and MCP server** if you want to create links from scripts or AI tools.
- **Clear, fast analytics** for countries, devices, browsers, and referrers.

You can see all of it on the [features page](https://lickity.click/features?ref=lickity.click).

**Where it falls short:** it's built for one creator, not a big team. If you need lots of users or SSO, look elsewhere. It doesn't do conversion tracking or affiliate payouts (that's Dub). And there's no free-forever plan; if you need one, Short.io or Dub's free plan is the answer.

**Best for:** creators who put links in YouTube descriptions, podcasts, and newsletters and want to know what those links did (and show sponsors when it helps).

## Why I built LickityClick

Before LickityClick, I used a lot of link tools: PixelMe, [Kutt](https://kutt.it/?ref=lickity.click), ThirstyAffiliates, BetterLinks, and Lasso. Each one had things I liked. Each one also left me wanting more, and the problems came down to three things.

**WordPress plugins tie your links to your website.** ThirstyAffiliates, BetterLinks, and Lasso are all WordPress plugins. So if the WordPress site goes down, the links go down too. That locked me into WordPress, and it put extra load on my hosting just to keep my links online. I don't like everything being that tied together.

**The SaaS link tools I tried often promised more than they delivered, and some weren't reliable for me.** And their limits were so tight that if my content got popular, I'd be punished for it financially.

**Self-hosted tools lacked features.** Kutt was great in some ways, but the self-hosted options I tried were missing features, and they weren't updated often enough.

So I knew what I wanted. I wanted my links on my own domain, and I wanted to make a new link whenever I felt like it without counting. I also wanted to connect my links to my AI workflows. That's why LickityClick has a CLI, a REST API, and an MCP server (a standard way for AI tools to use other apps directly).

Here's how the math compares. On Bitly, a custom domain starts at $348 a year and still has a 500-link monthly cap. LickityClick is $70 a year (or $84 if you pay monthly) with no link cap.

### Why owning your numbers matters

Sponsors don't usually ask for your link results. They have their own tracking.

![LickityClick sponsor campaign page with clicks, video views and click-through rate](https://lickity.click/blog/content/images/2026/10/lickityclick-campaign.webp)

A sponsor campaign with clicks next to video views. Demo account with simulated data.

But knowing your own numbers still matters. When you want to raise your rates, following up with those numbers takes the ball out of the sponsor's court. You can clearly say what value you provide and how much they save by working with you, instead of waiting for their numbers to make your case.

Every link I share now goes through daveswift.link, and those clicks go straight into the scorecard I use to see what's working.

### I barely open the app

I almost never open the LickityClick app. I use it through my AI, and my automations run it for me.

![LickityClick Link Health page with two broken links at the top](https://lickity.click/blog/content/images/2026/10/lickityclick-link-health.webp)

Broken links sit at the top of Link Health, so a changed sponsor page is easy to spot. Demo account with simulated data.

When I do open it, I'm looking at two things. Broken links are front and center, so I can see if a sponsor changed something without telling me and fix it before I lose money. Then I look at which links perform best, so I can make more content about the things people actually click on.

## FAQ

### Is there a free Bitly alternative?

Yes. Short.io's free plan includes 1,000 branded links total, 5 custom domains, and 50,000 tracked clicks a month. Dub's free plan includes 3 custom domains and 25 new links a month. LickityClick isn't free, but it has a 14-day trial with no credit card.

### Can I use my own domain for a custom short URL?

Yes, with most tools on this list. On Bitly, you need the Growth plan ($29/mo billed yearly) to use a custom domain. Short.io and Dub include custom domains on their free plans. LickityClick includes one domain on its $7/mo plan, and extra domains are $2/month each.

### Do my old links keep working if I switch from Bitly?

Not automatically. Links on bit.ly belong to Bitly, so if you leave, you'll need to update the links in places like old video descriptions. If you already use your own branded domain, you may be able to point that domain at the new tool and recreate your links there, but check whether the new tool supports importing before you switch.

### What's the best URL shortener for YouTube?

If you want to see link clicks next to video views, with a report page you can share with a sponsor, I built LickityClick for exactly that. If you only need short branded links and want to pay nothing, Short.io is a good place to start.

## Try it on your next video

Pick the next video, podcast, or newsletter you're putting a link in. Start a [free 14-day LickityClick trial](https://app.lickity.click/signup?utm%5Fsource=blog&utm%5Fmedium=bitly-alternative) (no credit card), connect your domain, and use your branded link there. After a week, look at the clicks next to the views and decide if it's worth $7 a month to you.