Does Bitly have a free plan? What you get, and where it stops
Yes, Bitly has a free plan. Their published pricing gives it 5 short links a month, 3 custom back-halves and 2 QR codes a month, with unlimited clicks. The plan card is labelled "With ads".
Older accounts can show different numbers. A free account opened in 2022, checked on 23 September 2026, still had 50 links, 50 back-halves and 50 QR codes a month and 30 days of click data. An account opened the same day got 5, 3 and 2, and no click data. If your dashboard says 50, that is a legacy allowance, not the plan on sale today.
How many links do you get on Bitly free?
Five a month. One campaign with a link per channel (an email, two social posts and a paid ad) uses the whole month, and a sixth link waits for the next one. That makes the free plan a trial with no end date: enough to see how Bitly works, not enough to run a newsletter, a shop or a campaign calendar on.
Bitly free plan limitations
Beyond the link count, these are missing from the free plan entirely:
- No click history. Click and scan data starts on Core at $10/month, with 30 days of it.
- No custom domain. One is included from Growth at $29/month.
- No data export. It starts on Growth. The API works on the free plan, and it can produce the same list.
- No country, city or device data. Country data starts on Core as a top-ten list. City and device data start on Premium at $199/month.
- No changing the destination. Where a link points is fixed once it is made. Changing it is a "link redirect", which starts on Core, and editing the back-half creates a new link instead and leaves the QR code on the old one.
- No second user. User management, group permissions and SSO are Enterprise features, so every plan below that is a one-person account.
Bitly free vs Urlicer free
Both free plans side by side. Bitly's figures are from their pricing page; ours are the limits the app enforces.
| Bitly Free | Urlicer Free | |
|---|---|---|
| Short links | 5 a month | 500 a month |
| QR codes | 2 a month | Unlimited, with colours and shapes |
| Custom back-halves | 3 a month | None (from Pro) |
| Clicks | Unlimited | 25,000 tracked a month; links keep redirecting past that |
| Click history | None | 30 days |
| Country, device, browser and referrer data | None | Included |
| Data export | From Growth ($29) | From Pro ($12) |
| Change where a link points | From Core ($10) | Included |
| API | 1,000 requests a month | 30 requests a minute |
| Ads | Yes | No |
The "Ads" row is not a banner in your dashboard. It is a page your visitors see before the destination: a cookie consent request, then an ad with a 7-second wait. What the ad page looks like.
Two rows to read closely. Bitly does not cap clicks, where Urlicer records them up to a monthly limit on each plan, and custom aliases start on our Pro plan.
What the free analytics look like
This is the breakdown every Urlicer plan shows for each link, the free plan included. The screenshot is from a demo workspace.
What changes with price is how long the history is kept: 30 days on free, 90 on Pro, a year on Team and two on Business (see pricing). There is no city-level breakdown on any plan.
Other free plans are compared in the best free URL shortener. The paid tiers are compared in Bitly alternatives compared, and Bitly's QR limits have their own page: does Bitly charge for QR codes.
The paid plans are broken down in Bitly pricing. Bitly figures above are from their pricing page as published in September 2026. Check bitly.com/pages/pricing for current numbers.
Want a free plan you can run a campaign on? Start with a free account. Links in your workspace never expire, and every one gets a QR code and click analytics.
Want the numbers next to each other instead? See the plans side by side: free against free, Bitly Core against Pro, and Bitly Growth against our Team plan. Or start with a free account.