Linktree Alternatives: 10 Tools Compared

An honest comparison of ten link-in-bio tools — what each free plan actually gives you, what selling costs, and which one fits your situation.

The honest answer is that "best" depends on what you are trying to do with the page. If you sell digital products, Stan Store and Beacons are built for it and Linktree is not. If you want design control, Carrd will go further than any of them. If you want a page that is genuinely free with nothing held back, that is a much shorter list than the marketing suggests.

This compares ten link-in-bio tools on the things that actually differ: what the free plan withholds, what selling costs once money moves, how much you can change the design, and who each one is genuinely for. Lonecto is one of the ten, and it is not the answer for most of the situations below.

Prices were checked on 5 September 2026. They move — Linktree repriced in November 2025 and several of these have changed tiers since — so confirm on the vendor's own page before you commit.

How these were compared

Six things, chosen because they are where these tools genuinely diverge rather than where their marketing pages differ.

What the free plan withholds. Almost every tool here has a free plan. The useful question is what it holds back: branding, analytics, the ability to take money, or the number of links.

What selling costs. Two separate numbers, and both matter. The subscription, and the cut taken from each sale. A free plan with a 12% commerce fee is more expensive than a $8/month plan with 9% as soon as you sell anything at volume.

What you can sell. Digital products, physical products, bookings, or nothing. This is the sharpest dividing line in the category and the one most roundups blur.

How you get paid. A card gateway with payouts, or a handoff to a conversation. Neither is better in the abstract; they suit different markets, and if you have not settled that question yet it is worth reading on its own before you pick a tool around it — we set out the trade-off in WhatsApp checkout versus card payments.

Design control. From "pick a theme" to "write the CSS".

Who it is for. Stated plainly, including when that is not you.

Two things this comparison does not do. It does not score the tools out of ten, because a single number hides the trade-off that actually decides the choice. And it does not claim to have tested every paid tier of every product — where a claim comes from a vendor's own documentation rather than from use, the text says so.

The short version

Best if you sell digital products: Stan Store, or Beacons if you want a free entry point.

Best for design control: Carrd.

Best completely free page: Lonecto, or Bio Sites if you want Squarespace behind it.

Best if you are already paying for social scheduling: Later's Linkin.bio.

Best one-time payment: Lnk.Bio.

Best for taking orders over WhatsApp or cash on delivery: Lonecto.

Best known, most integrations, most third-party support: Linktree.

Linktree

Best for: people who want the default, and want it to keep working without thought.

Free plan: unlimited links, basic appearance settings, basic analytics. Linktree branding stays. Selling on the free plan carries a 12% commerce fee.

Paid: Starter $8/month, Pro $15/month, Premium $35/month, each roughly 20% cheaper billed annually. The commerce fee falls to 9% on Starter and Pro, and to 0% on Premium. Prices as of 5 September 2026; this structure dates from a November 2025 repricing that raised Pro substantially.

Commerce: yes — tips, digital downloads, paid subscriptions — with the fee above on top of payment processing.

Customization: themes, colours, fonts and button styles. Not a design tool.

Analytics: basic on free, detailed on paid, with UTM support higher up.

Limitations: the fee structure is the real cost. If you sell regularly, the free plan is the most expensive option in this article, and 0% requires the $35/month tier.

What it does better than Lonecto: brand recognition, a much larger integration library, and an established payments path with real payouts.

What Lonecto does better: everything is free, including the things Linktree charges $35/month to unlock.

Choose it if: you want the tool everyone recognises and the fee is not material because you are not selling much through it.

Beacons

Best for: creators who want to monetise without paying up front.

Free plan: a full page, a store, email collection and a media kit, with a 9% transaction fee on sales.

Paid: Creator $10/month keeps the 9% fee; Creator Plus $30/month and Creator Max $90/month remove it. Checked 5 September 2026.

Commerce: strong — digital products, courses, appointments and tips, with an email list and CRM behind it.

Customization: good theme control, less than Carrd.

Analytics: detailed, including audience data feeding the CRM.

Limitations: the free and $10 tiers take 9% of everything, so the maths only works once volume justifies $30/month.

What it does better than Lonecto: it can actually sell a digital product and collect email addresses. Lonecto does neither.

What Lonecto does better: takes nothing from a sale, ever, because it does not process the sale.

Choose it if: you sell digital products and want to start without a subscription.

Stan Store

Best for: creators whose page IS the business.

Free plan: none. There is a trial, not a free tier.

Paid: Creator $29/month, Creator Pro $99/month, billed annually at $300 and $948. 0% platform fee on sales on both.

Commerce: the most complete here — digital products, courses, coaching, bookings, upsells and email marketing, built as a funnel rather than a link list.

Customization: deliberately constrained. The templates are conversion-shaped and you mostly work within them.

Analytics: revenue-focused, which is the point.

Limitations: the price. At $29/month it is the most expensive entry here by a distance, and it is poor value as a link page.

What it does better than Lonecto: it is a different category of product. Payments, payouts, digital delivery, funnels, email — Lonecto has none of these.

What Lonecto does better: nothing relevant, if selling digital products is your goal. Use Stan Store.

Choose it if: you sell courses, coaching or digital products and the subscription is smaller than what the 9-12% fees elsewhere would cost you.

Carrd

Best for: anyone who finds every other tool on this list too rigid.

Free plan: three sites, on a carrd.co subdomain, with most building blocks available.

Paid: Pro Lite $9/year, Pro Standard $19/year, Pro Plus $49/year. Checked 5 September 2026, and by a wide margin the cheapest paid tier here.

Commerce: limited and indirect — embeds and integrations rather than a built-in store.

Customization: the best in this article. Full control of layout, type and styling, with custom CSS on paid tiers.

Analytics: none built in; you connect your own.

Limitations: it is a one-page site builder, not a commerce tool. Everything commercial is something you wire up.

What it does better than Lonecto: design control, and it is not close.

What Lonecto does better: taking an order. Carrd will not do that without third-party plumbing.

Choose it if: you care more about how the page looks than what it can sell.

Taplink

Best for: small businesses that want a slightly deeper page than a link list.

Free plan: a working page with a limited block set.

Paid: from around $3/month, checked 5 September 2026, which is among the cheapest monthly options here.

Commerce: yes — payments via Stripe or PayPal, plus forms and booking blocks.

Customization: strong for the price, with multi-block pages closer to a small site.

Analytics: built in on paid tiers.

Limitations: the interface shows its age next to newer tools, and the free tier is restrictive.

What it does better than Lonecto: it takes card payments. Lonecto does not.

What Lonecto does better: the free tier is a real product rather than a sample.

Choose it if: you want cheap card payments on a bio page and do not need much design control.

Lnk.Bio

Best for: people who resent subscriptions.

Free plan: unlimited links with Lnk.Bio branding.

Paid: monthly tiers, and a one-time payment of around $24.99 for lifetime access — the only tool here with a genuine buy-once option. Checked 5 September 2026.

Commerce: light. Music and shop links, and integrations, rather than a checkout.

Customization: decent theming, nothing advanced.

Analytics: basic.

Limitations: fewer features than most of this list. The appeal is the pricing model, not the feature set.

What it does better than Lonecto: you can pay once and remove branding forever.

What Lonecto does better: there is no branding to remove and nothing to pay.

Choose it if: a one-time payment genuinely suits you better than free.

Campsite

Best for: people who want clean design and real analytics without a big bill.

Free plan: a solid page with unlimited links.

Paid: Pro from around $7/month, checked 5 September 2026.

Commerce: limited — integrations rather than a store.

Customization: good, with a considered default aesthetic.

Analytics: among the strongest here, including UTM tracking on paid.

Limitations: not a selling tool.

What it does better than Lonecto: analytics depth and design polish.

What Lonecto does better: products and orders on the page itself.

Choose it if: the page routes traffic and you want to understand that traffic properly.

Bio Sites by Squarespace

Best for: people who want free, pretty and backed by a company that will still exist.

Free plan: genuinely free, with a good template set.

Paid: upgrades available; the free tier is the draw.

Commerce: basic, and stronger if you are already inside Squarespace.

Customization: good templates, limited beyond them.

Analytics: basic.

Limitations: it exists to bring you into Squarespace, and it is shallow if you stay outside.

What it does better than Lonecto: design polish, and a large company behind it.

What Lonecto does better: taking orders on the page without a payment gateway.

Choose it if: you want free and good-looking, and you may want a Squarespace site later.

Later Linkin.bio

Best for: people already paying Later for scheduling.

Free plan: not standalone; it is part of Later's plans.

Paid: included in Later's social plans rather than sold separately.

Commerce: shoppable posts and product links, tied to your Instagram grid.

Customization: limited by design — it mirrors your feed.

Analytics: good, and joined up with your scheduling data.

Limitations: paying for Later purely to get this makes no sense.

What it does better than Lonecto: it maps your actual Instagram grid to links, which is a genuinely different idea.

What Lonecto does better: it is a standalone page, free, that does not depend on another subscription.

Choose it if: you already use Later.

Lonecto

Best for: sellers who take orders through conversations rather than checkouts.

Free plan: the whole product. Every template, unlimited links, unlimited products, full analytics. No paid tier exists, no card is asked for, and there is no watermark to remove.

Paid: none.

Commerce: physical products with a cart, and orders that complete over WhatsApp, an Instagram DM, or cash on delivery. Also booking requests.

How you get paid: directly, by your buyer. Lonecto never handles the money and is not a payment processor, so there is no gateway, no payout schedule and no cut.

Customization: 46 templates with editable colours, fonts and sections. More than Linktree's theming, less than Carrd.

Analytics: page views, link clicks and product views, included.

Limitations — read these before choosing it. No card payments. No digital products; the product catalogue is physical goods only. No email capture or marketing tools. No funnels or upsells. It is a younger product than everything else here, with a smaller ecosystem and fewer integrations.

What it does better than the others: nothing is gated. The comparison every other tool invites — free tier versus paid tier — does not apply, because there is one tier. And the WhatsApp, Instagram DM and cash-on-delivery order flow is not something the others do, because it is built for markets where card payment online is the exception rather than the rule.

Choose it if: you sell physical things and your customers already message you to buy, or you want a complete page without a subscription. Do not choose it if: you sell digital products, need card payments, or need an email list.

If that first description is you, there is nothing to evaluate and no trial to start — make the page and see whether it does what you need.

How to actually choose

Answer one question first: does money need to move through the page?

If it does, and the products are digital, the list is Stan Store or Beacons and the decision is subscription versus transaction fee. Stan Store at $29/month with 0% beats Beacons at 9% somewhere around $320 of monthly sales; below that, Beacons is cheaper.

If it does, and the products are physical with card payment, Taplink or Linktree Premium.

If it does, and your buyers pay on delivery or over WhatsApp, Lonecto — that is what it is built for, and none of the others do it.

If money does not need to move through the page, you are choosing on design and cost. Carrd for control, Campsite for analytics, Bio Sites for free polish, Lonecto for free with a shop attached, Linktree for familiarity.

And if you are on Linktree's free plan and selling through it, work out 12% of last month's sales before you conclude that free is what you are getting.

If you want to run the decision properly rather than take a roundup's word for it, we have a nine-question checklist for choosing a link-in-bio platform — ownership of the handle, export, load time on a cheap phone, and what the free tier really costs.

Questions

Is there a completely free Linktree alternative?

Several tools have free plans, but most hold something back — branding, analytics, or the ability to sell without a fee. Bio Sites and Lonecto are the two here with no paid tier gating features, though they are very different products: Bio Sites is a Squarespace on-ramp, Lonecto is a page that takes orders. There are three different things the word "free" is doing across this list, and telling them apart is worth five minutes: what free actually means on a link-in-bio store.

Which Linktree alternative is best for selling?

Digital products: Stan Store or Beacons. Physical products with card payment: Taplink or Linktree Premium. Physical products paid on delivery or over WhatsApp: Lonecto.

Do I lose my traffic if I switch?

Only if you switch and forget. The link in your bio is under your control — change it, and the traffic follows on the next visit. What you lose is anything pointing at your old URL from elsewhere: an old post, a business card, a printed QR code. Update those before you retire the old page, and keep it live for a while afterwards.

Is Linktree still worth paying for?

If you use the integrations and the analytics, and you sell enough that 0% at $35/month beats 9% at $15/month, yes. If you use it as a list of links, you are paying for brand recognition.