Bitly vs Cuttly (2026): Prices, Analytics and Which to Pick

In a Bitly vs Cuttly comparison, Cuttly wins for most buyers on volume and reporting: $25 a month gets you 5,000 links and a year of click history on Cuttly Single, while $35 a month gets you 500 links and 120 days on Bitly Growth. Bitly earns the higher price with native mobile apps, a deeper set of integrations and destination edits with no same-domain rule, starting on its $10 Core plan.

The first page of Google will not tell you that plainly. It is mostly Bitly's own comparison, Cuttly's own comparison and catalog pages, and each vendor happens to find itself the better choice. So every plan number below comes from the two official pricing pages, checked on November 2, 2026: Bitly pricing and Cuttly pricing.

Bitly vs Cuttly at a glance: prices and link limits

These are the three pairs most buyers weigh against each other. Prices are per month with yearly billing, monthly billing in brackets.

Divide the yearly bill by the yearly link allowance and the gap gets silly. Bitly Growth works out to $0.058 a link. Cuttly Single works out to $0.0046, more than 12 times less. Bitly's other plans land at $0.10 (Core) and $0.066 (Premium), and the full math is in our Bitly pricing guide.

But honestly, most people never create 5,000 links a month. At 40 links a month, Bitly Core costs $0.25 a link and Cuttly Single $0.57, because you pay for an allowance you do not touch. Volume only matters if you have the volume.

The cheapest pair has a trap on each side. Bitly Core is sold yearly only, so the real entry price is $120 upfront, while Cuttly Starter lets you pay $12 for a single month. Cuttly Starter's 300 links, on the other hand, include just 30 custom endings a month. Anything past that gets a random string instead of a readable name. If every link you publish needs one, Core's 100 beats Starter's 30.

Bulk creation is counted differently too. Bitly allows 100 links per upload on Growth and 3,000 on Premium. Cuttly caps the CSV importer per month: 100 links on Single, 2,000 on Team.

Free plans: 5 links with ads, or 30 links with real data

This is the easiest round to call, and Cuttly takes it.

Bitly Free gives 5 links, 2 QR codes, 3 custom endings and 2 landing pages a month. Its pricing page labels the plan "With Ads" and shows no data history at all, and a Bitly help article describes the preview page with an ad that visitors can land on first. Five links will test the interface. They will not run a campaign.

Cuttly Free gives 30 links, 3 custom endings, one bio page with up to 5 URLs and a single QR style. It also keeps 30 days of analytics broken down by country, device, OS, browser and referrer, which is more detail than Bitly shows below $199 a month. Cuttly says it does not put ad pages in front of links on any plan.

Neither free plan lets you change a destination after creating the link. Keep that in mind before printing anything.

Also a warning about vendor comparisons. Cuttly's other comparison post states that "Bitly similarly does not place interstitial ads on links". Bitly's own pricing page says "With Ads" on the free plan. Check the vendor's page, not the competitor's summary of it.

Click analytics: Cuttly goes deeper for less, Bitly rolls up better

Analytics is where the two products split most clearly. Here is what each pricing table lists, plan by plan.

Read the device row again. At Bitly, device data starts at $199 a month on a yearly bill. At Cuttly, it is on the free plan. The same pattern repeats with history: a full year costs $25 a month on Cuttly Single and $199 a month on Bitly Premium. If your question is "where did this link's clicks come from, and on what kind of phone?", Cuttly answers it for far less money.

Cuttly also charts bot clicks separately from Single up, and lets you count all clicks or unique clicks. Bitly's table has no matching rows.

One gap we could not close: city data. Cuttly's pricing table lists a country row and no city row, yet its May 2026 comparison post says it tracks "country and city level". If city numbers matter to you, test it on a free Cuttly account before you pay.

Now the other side. Bitly is stronger once you stop looking at one link at a time. Custom dashboards for cross-channel reporting start on Core (2) and reach 10 on Growth, and Campaigns arrive on Premium. Cuttly's combined views are narrow: aggregated analytics cover 10 links over the last 7 days on Single and 25 links over 14 days on Team, and tag-based campaign reports on Team cover 50 links over 14 days. A month-long campaign across 40 links does not fit in that window. Your per-link history is still there, but you end up adding it up yourself. More on what to measure in the first place is in URL shorteners with analytics.

Destination edits: Bitly counts them, Cuttly fences them

Changing where a link points after it is published is the main reason to pay for a shortener. The two companies restrict it in opposite ways, and the restriction is easy to miss in a plan table.

Bitly gives you a counter: 5 changes a month on Core, 20 on Growth, 110 on Premium, shared with QR codes per the pricing table's "Redirects" rows. The destination can be whatever you need. When the counter runs out, you wait for next month.

Cuttly gives you a fence. Starter and Single allow unlimited edits, but the table adds "url must be from the same domain". Only Team at $99 can change a link to any URL. Free has no edits at all.

So which is worse? It depends on what you change. Say you printed 2,000 flyers with a QR code pointing at your site, and you swap the landing page twice a week. Cuttly Single never counts those changes, while Bitly Core runs out in the third week of every month. Now say the store moves from one domain to another, or the flyer needs to point at a Google Form for a month. Bitly Core handles it in one edit, and on Cuttly Single that link cannot follow you there without moving up to Team. That is the part of the static vs dynamic QR code question that plan tables hide: a QR code is only as editable as the plan behind it.

Teams, deep links and integrations: where each one pulls ahead

Teams are a clear win for Cuttly, at least on price transparency. Team at $99 a month includes 3 teams of 5 members, and Team Enterprise at $149 includes 10 teams of 20 members plus SSO. Bitly lists multiple users, group permissions and SSO under Enterprise only, with no public price. If you need three people in one account and you do not want a sales call, that settles it.

App links lean the same way. Cuttly lists mobile URLs with custom app schemes on Single at $25 and full App Store and Google Play deep links on Team at $99. Bitly's mobile deep linking starts on Premium at $199 a month with yearly billing. Both are real features, and both are well above the entry tier.

Bitly's advantage is everything around the link. Its pricing page lists a mobile app for Android and iOS on every plan, including Free. Cuttly's own article confirms it has no native app, only a responsive dashboard. On integrations, Bitly's comparison names native connections such as Salesforce, HubSpot and Slack, while Cuttly works through connector services like Zapier, Make and Zoho Flow. That Bitly post is marketing, but on this point both vendors tell the same story.

The API numbers favor Bitly at the low end: 1,000 requests a month on Free and 5,000 on Core, against Cuttly's 3 calls a minute and 30 links a month on Free. Bitly also allows a logo on QR codes from Core, while Cuttly's customization starts on Single, and the Bitly Assist AI tool comes with Core too. Cuttly has one thing Bitly's pricing page does not list at all: surveys, from 1 survey with 10 responses on Free up to 50 surveys on Team Enterprise.

One claim to read carefully: Bitly's article says Cuttly "does not offer a dedicated campaign management module in the same way Bitly does". Cuttly's pricing page does list Campaigns on Team and above, but with the 14-day window above. So Bitly's sentence is misleading, and the limit behind it is real.

Bitly or Cuttly: which one to choose

Pick Cuttly if you create links in volume, want device, OS and browser data without paying $199 a month, or need a small team in one account at a published price. Cuttly Single at $25 is the plan that makes the case, and the plan-by-plan detail is in our Cuttly alternative guide. Just check the same-domain rule against how you actually edit links, and buy before the campaign so the long history gets recorded.

Pick Bitly if you manage links from your phone, your stack depends on native connectors, or you need rolled-up reporting across many links. Bitly Core also suits someone with a modest link count who wants readable endings and the occasional edit to any URL. Size the plan against the edit counter and the QR counter, not the link counter. If Hootsuite runs your social posts, see Bitly vs Ow.ly too.

Stay on the free plans only for testing, and if that is all you need, Cuttly Free is the one to test.

Still undecided? Bitly vs TinyURL covers another common pairing, and seven URL shorteners compared lines up the wider market by entry price and first limit. If Bitly's pricing is what started this search, why marketers are replacing Bitly goes further.

Linxly: more for less when neither plan fits

Both tools make you give something up. Bitly counts your edits and keeps city and device data for its $199 plan. Cuttly limits edits to one domain until you reach $99 a month. Linxly Pro removes that choice for $7.99 a month.

The savings are real at normal volume. At 40 links a month, the example from earlier, a link costs $0.20 on Pro, against $0.25 on Bitly Core and $0.57 on Cuttly Single. Pro's 250 links a month cover that six times over.

As a URL shortener, Linxly lets you point a link at a different site as often as the campaign needs. Every link gets a QR code automatically, with your logo and colors on Pro. Pro also adds password protection, link expiration, a UTM builder and full click detail: device model, OS, browser, referrer and UTM. Your bio pages and app store links sit in the same account, so you stop paying for separate tools.

Need less or more? Starter covers a handful of links at $0.99 a month. Business gives you 5,000 links a month, 5 years of history and API access at $39.99.

You can test it on one link you edit often:

1. Start the 7-day trial and paste the long URL.
2. Choose an ending like linx.ly/fall-offer. The QR code is ready with the link.
3. Point it at a page on a different domain, then back. Nothing is counted, and the QR code keeps working.

Want the full row-by-row view? See Bitly vs Linxly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Cuttly better than Bitly?

For link volume and per-link analytics at a published price, usually yes: Cuttly Single gives 5,000 links and a year of history for $25 a month. Bitly is better for native mobile apps, native integrations and cross-channel dashboards.

Is Cuttly free?

It has a free plan with 30 links a month, one QR style, one bio page with 5 URLs and 30 days of analytics. Destination edits start on the paid Starter plan, at $12 a month or $132 a year.

Can you edit a Cuttly link after creating it?

Yes, on paid plans. Starter and Single allow unlimited edits, but the new URL must be from the same domain. Team and Team Enterprise can change a link to any URL.

Does Bitly or Cuttly have better analytics?

Cuttly shows more per link for less money, with device, OS, browser and referrer data on its free plan and a year of history at $25 a month. Bitly's device and city data start at Premium, but its dashboards and campaign reports handle many links at once better.

Do Linxly links keep working if I stop paying?

Yes. Links and QR codes you created keep redirecting after the plan ends. Editing destinations and viewing new stats need an active plan.

How much does Linxly cost?

Linxly starts at $0.99 a month. Pro is $7.99 and Business $39.99. Every plan opens with a 7-day free trial, and you can cancel anytime.