Bitly free plan limits
Five links a month.
And a stop
on the way.
Bitly’s free plan gives you 5 short links, 2 QR Codes and 3 custom back-halves a month, with no click data, no custom domain and no way to change where a link points. Free links show a destination preview page with an ad before the visitor arrives. The cheapest plan without the ad is Core at $10 a month, billed yearly. Free links do not expire. Below: every limit side by side, a free UTM builder, and how short links on your own domain compare.
By the Builderify team
Bitly’s free plan limits,
line by line.
Five new links a month is the headline, but it is not the limit most people hit first. On the free plan you cannot see how many people clicked, cannot fix a link that points to the wrong page, and every link runs on bit.ly.
- The 5 links reset every month. Clicks are unlimited.
- Click and scan data starts on Core, with 30 days of history.
- Changing a link’s destination is a paid “redirect”: 5 a month on Core.
- Your own domain starts on Growth, $29 a month billed yearly.
| Bitly plan | Free $0 Free for ever | Core $10/mo Billed yearly ($120). Annual only | Growth $29/mo Billed yearly ($348), or $35 monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Short links | 5 a month | 100 a month | 500 a month |
| QR Codes | 2 a month | 5 a month | 10 a month |
| Custom back-halves | 3 a month | 100 a month | 500 a month |
| Clicks and scans | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Click and scan data | None | 30 days | 4 months |
| Change a link’s destination | No | 5 a month | 20 a month |
| UTM builder | No | Yes | Yes |
| Your own domain | No | No | One, registration included |
| Schedule a link to expire | No | No | Yes |
| Preview page with an ad | Yes | No | No |
From Bitly’s pricing page, read on 3 October 2026; prices are in US dollars before sales tax and plans renew automatically. Core is sold on annual billing only, so the cheapest plan you can pay for month by month is Growth at $35. The ad row comes from Bitly’s help centre: paid plans are ad-free.
Why Bitly shows ads
on free links.
Bitly says it uses ads on free accounts “to continue delivering free plans at no cost”. Someone who taps a free link lands first on a Bitly page with a preview of where the link goes and an ad, then continues to your page. Paid plans skip that page.
-
1
Someone taps your link
A bit.ly link from a free account, in a post, an email or a printed QR Code.
-
2
Bitly’s preview page
Bitly’s own page shows a preview of the destination and an ad. Bitly calls this a destination preview.
-
3
Then your page
The visitor carries on to the address you shortened, if they carry on.
When it started
Bitly told free users in February 2025 that “your Bitly links and QR Codes may show a preview page before directing your audience to the destination URL”, as reported by Coywolf on 6 February 2025. The notice spoke of your links, not only new ones, so links already printed or shared were included.
What removes it
Any paid plan. The cheapest is Core: $10 a month, billed as $120 a year, with no monthly option. Paying month to month starts at Growth, $35. Bitly’s help centre says the only fix is to upgrade to a paid plan.
Links made without an account
Bitly has discontinued its anonymous link generator. Links made with it keep working, with the preview page and ads, and cannot be moved into an account or upgraded. To lose the ad you recreate the link in a paid account and replace it wherever it was used.
Do Bitly links expire?
No. Domains are another matter.
Bitly’s answer is short: “Bitly Links never expire.” That holds on the free plan, and there is no cap on clicks. A link stops working only if you delete it, when it returns a 404 error. Hiding a link takes it out of your list but keeps it working. Scheduling a link to expire is a Growth feature.
What a promise like that cannot cover is the shortener itself. A short link is an address on somebody else’s domain, and it works for as long as they keep answering it. Google’s goo.gl, run by one of the largest companies there is, shows how that ends.
The lesson: put links on a domain you own
A link such as go.yourshop.com/spring is an address you control. If a service changes its terms or closes, you can point that subdomain at another one and recreate the paths there, and the QR Codes you printed keep working. Bitly makes the same point in its own terms: links on a custom domain keep working only “as long as your DNS settings still point to Bitly”, and the DNS is yours.
-
2018
Google announces the end of its URL Shortener. No new links can be made; existing ones keep working.
-
18 Jul 2024
Google says every goo.gl link will stop responding after 25 August 2025.
-
23 Aug 2024
A growing share of goo.gl links start showing a notice page before they redirect.
-
1 Aug 2025
Update: only links that showed no activity in late 2024 will be switched off. Active links are kept.
-
25 Aug 2025
The inactive links stop working. Anyone following one gets an error instead of the page.
From Google’s Developers Blog, which noted that more than 99% of goo.gl links had seen no activity in the month before the announcement. Links Google’s own apps generate, such as Maps sharing, were not affected.
A free UTM link builder,
no account needed.
Bitly’s UTM builder starts on Core. UTM tags are just text on the end of a web address, so you can build them here, then shorten the result anywhere. Your analytics tool reads them when the visitor lands, whatever shortener sent them.
https://yourshop.com/spring-menu?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring-menu-2026&utm_content=header-button
| Tag | Value | Answers |
|---|---|---|
| utm_source | newsletter | Where was it shared? |
| utm_medium | What kind of channel? | |
| utm_campaign | spring-menu-2026 | Which push is it part of? |
| utm_term | Not used | Which paid keyword? |
| utm_content | header-button | Which link or button? |
-
Lowercase, every time
Google Analytics treats values as case sensitive, so Facebook and facebook report as two sources. The builder lowercases by default for that reason.
-
Source, medium and campaign
Google Analytics asks for these three on every tagged link. Missing ones show up in reports as “(not set)”. Term and content are optional.
-
Tag it, then shorten it
Paste the finished link in as the destination of your short link. The short address stays tidy, and the tags reach the page when someone clicks.
A free Bitly alternative
with a custom domain.
Several shorteners let you use your own domain without paying, which Bitly does not. Each row was read on the vendor’s own pricing or help pages on 3 October 2026. Where a vendor does not say, the table says so.
| Shortener | New links, free | Your own domain, free | Change destination | Click data, free | Ad page | Cheapest paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitly | 5 a month | No; from Growth, $29/mo yearly | No; from Core | None on free | Yes, a preview page | Core, $10/mo billed yearly |
| Rebrandly | 10 a month | 1 custom domain | No; 10 edits a month from Essentials | Click totals; details on 100 clicks a month | Not stated | Essentials, $8/mo yearly or $11 monthly |
| Short.io | 1,000 in total, not per month | 5 custom domains | Yes | Statistics on 50,000 clicks a month | Not stated | Hobby, from $5/mo |
| TinyURL | Not stated | No; tinyurl.com only | No; paid plans only | No; paid plans only | Not stated | Not stated |
| Builderify | No monthly link cap | Yes, after two DNS records | Yes, any time | Referrer, place, device, browser; unique clicks | No: a direct redirect | No plans: 250 free credits a month, packs from $9 |
“Not stated” on an ad page means the vendor’s pricing page does not mention one. TinyURL’s plan prices load only in a browser, so its link limit and paid price are left blank rather than guessed; its free plan facts come from TinyURL’s own help articles, which also say its links never expire. Short.io’s free links are a lifetime allowance, not a monthly one.
Short links on your own domain,
with nothing in between.
Builderify Short Links run on a subdomain you own, such as go.yourshop.com, and a link looks like go.yourshop.com/s/spring-menu. A click is recorded and the visitor is sent straight to your page: there is no preview page and no ad. Until your domain is verified, links use Builderify’s shared short domain.
Short links have no line of their own on the rate card. Your account runs on 250 free Usage Credits a month, and if you outgrow them, one-time packs start at $9 for 1,000 credits that never expire. There is no subscription to keep paying for your links to keep working. The full rate card is on the pricing page.
-
1 Ownership
- Type
- TXT
- Host
- _builderify.go.yourshop.com
- Value
- builderify-verify=<your token>
Proves the domain is yours. The token is unique to your account.
-
2 Tracking
- Type
- CNAME
- Host
- go.yourshop.com
- Value
- the host shown in your dashboard
Routes the subdomain to Builderify, which serves your short links on it.
The DNS check re-runs on its own while a domain is waiting, and one verified domain is the default for new links.
Change the destination any time
Edit where a link points, its title or its custom ending whenever you like, with no monthly edit allowance. The printed address stays the same.
No expiry unless you choose it
A link stays live until you switch it off or delete it. Switching it off keeps its history, and you can switch it back on.
Pick the ending
Write your own ending of up to 50 letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores, or leave it blank for a random seven-character code.
Clicks, and unique clicks
Every click is counted. A click counts as unique when it is the first from that visitor’s network address in 24 hours.
Where they came from
Referrer, country, region and city, device, browser and operating system, over 24 hours, 7, 30 or 90 days. Proxy, VPN and hosting clicks are flagged.
A year of detail, totals for life
Click-by-click detail is kept for 400 days, long enough to compare a campaign with last year’s. Each link’s total and unique counts are kept for as long as the link exists.
Links in Broadcast email campaigns become short links by default. Once a visitor arrives, User Journey shows their landing page, referrer and traffic source, and which campaigns end in a goal. See Short Links in full.
Bitly's free plan, before you ask.
Bitly's free plan allows 5 short links, 2 QR Codes and 3 custom back-halves a month, with unlimited clicks. It includes no click or scan data, no custom domain, and you cannot change where a link points after creating it. These limits are from Bitly's pricing page, checked on 3 October 2026.
Bitly says it uses ads on free accounts to keep its free plans at no cost. Since February 2025, a free link can show a destination preview page with an ad before the visitor reaches your page. Any paid plan removes it; the cheapest is Core at $10 a month billed yearly ($120), and paying month to month starts at Growth, $35.
No. Bitly says its links never expire, free plan included, and clicks are unlimited. A deleted link returns a 404 error, while a hidden link keeps working. Links on a custom domain work as long as your DNS still points to Bitly.
Yes. Rebrandly's free plan includes 1 custom domain and 10 links a month, and Short.io's free plan allows 5 custom domains and 1,000 links in total. Builderify Short Links run on a subdomain you own once you add two DNS records, short links have no charge of their own on its rate card, and there is no subscription.
Bitly's own UTM builder starts on the Core plan. UTM tags are just text on the end of a web address, so you can build the tagged address with any UTM builder, such as the free one in this guide, and then shorten it. Keep values lowercase, because Google Analytics treats them as case sensitive.
Sources
Vendor and Google pages, read on 3 October 2026.
- Bitly Pricing: plans and limits
- Bitly Support Why are there ads on my links?
- Bitly Support Free Short Link Generator (Anonymous Link) FAQ
- Bitly Support Will the links I create on Bitly ever expire?
- Bitly Blog Bitly free plan: features, limits and when to upgrade
- Coywolf, 6 Feb 2025 Bitly adds interstitial ads to shortened URLs
- Google Developers Blog Google URL Shortener links will no longer be available (updated 1 Aug 2025)
- Google Analytics Help Collect campaign data with custom URLs
- Rebrandly Pricing
- Short.io Pricing
- TinyURL What’s included in TinyURL’s free plan?
- TinyURL Can I change the destination of my short links on a free plan?
Stop losing the visitors
you already paid for.
More leads from the traffic you already have, and follow-up that sends itself. Free to start. No card, no monthly fee.