Short links, a branded domain, QR codes, campaigns and real analytics, without the jump from a small-business plan to an enterprise one. The Free plan uses a verified account.
Bitly figures below are from Bitly's published pricing page, checked on 13 September 2026. Plans change; check theirs before deciding. ashrt.link figures are the limits our own API enforces, listed on our pricing page.
| Free plan | Bitly Free | ashrt.link Free |
|---|---|---|
| New links | 5 per month | 10 per 30 days |
| QR codes | 2 per month | One for every link, 10 downloads a month |
| Click history | Not included | 30 days |
| Referrers, countries, devices | Not on free | Included |
| Email verification | Account required | Required for the Free plan |
| API | Not on free | 25 calls a day |
| Paid | Bitly | ashrt.link |
|---|---|---|
| First paid tier | Core, $10/mo billed annually, 100 links a month | Pro, $9/mo, 250 links per 30 days |
| A branded domain arrives at | Growth, $29/mo annually | Pro, $9/mo |
| Link expiry arrives at | Growth, $29/mo annually | Pro, $9/mo |
| Campaign-level reporting arrives at | Premium, $199/mo annually | Free |
| Click history on the first paid tier | 30 days | 400 days |
| Top tier before enterprise | Premium, $199/mo annually, 3,000 links a month | Business, $29/mo, 2,500 links per 30 days |
A monthly link cap that also counts everything you made last year eventually forces you to delete old links to publish new ones, and a deleted short link is a dead link on whatever it was printed on. Here the count is of links created in the last 30 days. Everything you have already published keeps working and stops counting once its window passes.
Referrers, countries, devices, browsers, operating systems, time of day, day of week, campaign totals and CSV export are on the free plan. The paid plans sell a domain, QR design, link expiry and volume. We would rather charge for capacity than for the numbers that tell you whether any of it worked.
Slack, X, Facebook, Discord and iMessage all fetch a link the moment you post it, to build the preview. Counting those as clicks makes every link look like it did better than it did. They are classified by service, kept in their own panel, and excluded from your click total, so the number you report to somebody else is defensible.
No interstitial page, no advert, no "you are being redirected". One 302 to where the link says it goes. The only exception is a link we have flagged for review, which shows a warning instead of forwarding, and that is a safety measure rather than a monetisation.
Destinations stay editable, the last ten are kept with the date and who changed them, and any of them can be restored. Before you change a link, the editor tells you how many clicks it has had in the last 30 days, because that is the number that makes it a decision rather than a form field.
Being straight about this is more useful than pretending otherwise. Bitly has been around far longer, and their scale shows in places we do not compete: SSO and group permissions, a dedicated success manager, mobile deep linking, city-level geography, a much larger integration catalogue, and the simple fact that bit.ly is a link people recognise. If you need enterprise access control or deep linking into native apps, buy the thing that has them.
We are built for the person or small team who wants branded, trackable links and honest numbers without a four-figure annual commitment.
Existing Bitly links keep working; nothing here breaks them, and there is no need to migrate history. The usual approach is to point a new subdomain, something like go.yourbrand.com, at ashrt.link, start making new links here, and leave the old ones alone. Setup is a TXT record and a CNAME, and the domain screen tells you which of the checks is still outstanding rather than saying "pending".