Linktree and Beacons are the two names that come up in almost every "what should my bio link be" conversation, and they're genuinely different products wearing the same disguise. Linktree is the category default — the fastest way to get a clean page of links live. Beacons is a creator business toolkit — media kit, email list, digital products — that happens to start from a link page. We compared them the same way we compared the whole category in our roundup of the best link in bio tools: what the free plan really gives you, what the paid tiers really cost you, and what the page feels like a year in.
One thing up front: we make a competing product, and we'll get to it — clearly marked — at the end. Everything before that section is us calling the match between two tools we don't make, as fairly as we can.
What Linktree does best.
Linktree invented this category, and the years of head start show in the right places. Setup is genuinely the fastest in the space: sign up, paste links, done, often inside ten minutes. The integration catalog is the largest of any link-in-bio tool — music platforms, video, commerce, forms, payment providers — so whatever you want embedded in the page, there's usually a first-party block for it. And the brand itself carries weight: "check my Linktree" is a phrase your audience already understands, which sounds trivial until you're asking strangers to click something.
The free plan is a real free plan, not a trial in a costume. Unlimited links, basic customization, and enough to run indefinitely. What it isn't is generous: the deeper analytics, most of the visual customization, scheduling, and branding removal all live behind paid tiers, with the cheapest starting at about $5 a month. Linktree's model is classic freemium — the free page works, and every reason to love it more costs money.
What Beacons does best.
Beacons decided the link page was table stakes and built the business around it. The one account includes a media kit generator that assembles your stats into a brand-pitch page, an email marketing tool, a store for digital products, and an AI-forward page builder that will draft the whole thing from your social profiles. For a creator whose bio link is really a storefront-plus-résumé, that bundle is the entire pitch: the tools you'd otherwise stitch together from three subscriptions live in one place, aware of each other.
The free tier is unusually feature-rich — you can sell on it, which Linktree's free tier doesn't really match. The catch is the model: selling on the free plan means Beacons takes a transaction fee on each sale, and upgrading to a paid plan trades that fee for a subscription. That's a fair structure, and honestly a friendly one when you're starting from zero revenue, but the math flips as your volume grows. It's the same trade-off we flagged in our Linktree alternatives guide: free-with-fees is cheap until it isn't.
Free plan reality.
Both free plans are genuine, but they're generous in different directions. Linktree's free tier is deliberately simple: unlimited links, a handful of themes, Linktree branding on the page, and analytics that tell you views and clicks but not much else. It's built to be enough — and to make the $5-ish entry tier look reasonable the moment you want more.
Beacons' free tier gives you more surface area — the store, the media kit, email in limited form — but monetizes through the transaction fee instead of the paywall. If you sell nothing, Beacons free arguably gives you more product than Linktree free. If you sell a lot, the fee becomes the most expensive subscription you never signed up for. Run your own numbers before deciding which "free" is actually cheaper for you.
Design control.
Neither tool will let a free page escape looking like the vendor's page, but they get to that outcome differently. Linktree's design system is buttons-in-a-stack with themes; it's clean and consistent, and the good customization — fonts, backgrounds, layouts beyond the stack — concentrates in paid tiers. The result is polished but recognizably Linktree, which is either reassuring or mildly annoying depending on how much you care about brand.
Beacons offers more block variety out of the gate — media embeds, product cards, request forms — and the AI builder produces a more "designed" first draft than Linktree's blank stack. The flip side is that more blocks means more ways to build something cluttered, and Beacons pages can drift toward busy. If you want to see what restraint looks like in this category, we collected 18 link in bio examples that convert — the best pages on both tools are the sparse ones.
Monetization.
This is the cleanest split between the two. Beacons treats selling as a core feature: digital products, tips, brand-deal requests, and paid emails are native blocks, and the whole product assumes you're building toward revenue. Linktree has added commerce over the years — payment locks, affiliate features, integrations with selling platforms — but it still feels like a links page that can sell rather than a store that holds links. If the primary job of your bio link is "take money," Beacons is playing at home and Linktree is playing away.
If the primary job is "route traffic" — to your video, your newsletter, your booking page, someone else's checkout — the advantage flips, because Linktree's routing is simpler and its integration catalog is broader.
Analytics.
Linktree's free analytics are thin — lifetime views and clicks, roughly — and the useful layers (click-through rates over time, sources, per-link performance history) arrive with paid tiers. Beacons is somewhat more generous with data on lower tiers and folds in commerce metrics, since sales are the point. Neither gives you anything resembling real web analytics; both are "good enough to see what's working." If you need more than that, you'll end up pointing links at pages you control and measuring there.
Growth path.
Think about month twelve, not week one. On Linktree, growth means climbing paid tiers: more customization, more analytics, branding removal, and the page stays a page of links. That ceiling is honest — Linktree doesn't pretend to be your website — but it means the moment you need a real store, a course, or a site, you're adding a second tool and a second bill.
On Beacons, growth means leaning into the bundle: more products in the store, the email list, the media kit. The ceiling is higher for a creator business specifically, but it's still a creator toolkit — if your thing becomes an actual business with invoices, bookings, or a team, you'll outgrow it in a different direction. Neither tool is trying to be the last tool you buy, which is exactly the gap the next section is about.
The third option.
Disclosure: Mewayz is our product.
The reason we can afford to be fair about Linktree versus Beacons is that we compete with both from a different angle. Mewayz's free plan includes a link in bio page — unlimited links, click analytics, platform-inspired themes — but the same free account also includes an online store, a website builder, and a digital business card, with 150+ modules behind them on paid tiers for one flat fee. So where Linktree's growth path is "upgrade the link page" and Beacons' is "use more of the creator kit," ours is "turn on the next module" — the page, the store, and eventually the site and the books live in one account.
The honest trade-off: Mewayz is a whole business platform, which is a heavier proposition than either tool in this comparison. Linktree will get a page live faster, and Beacons' media kit has no direct equivalent in our free plan. If a page of links is all you'll ever want, either of them is a lighter choice. If you suspect the link page is the first piece of a business, that's the case we built for — the full side-by-side is at Mewayz vs Linktree, and you can start free and judge it yourself.
FAQ
Is Linktree or Beacons better?
Neither is better outright. Linktree is the faster, more familiar choice for a clean page of links with the biggest integration catalog. Beacons is better if you're selling digital products, pitching brands, or building an email list from your bio link.
Is Beacons really free?
Yes — the free tier is genuinely usable and includes selling features. But sales on the free plan carry a transaction fee, so as your revenue grows, upgrading to a paid plan usually becomes the cheaper option. Do the math for your volume.
Is Linktree still worth it in 2026?
For the core job — one reliable, familiar page of links — yes. The free plan works indefinitely, and the paid entry tier is inexpensive. The criticism it attracts is mostly about how much sits behind paid tiers, not about the product failing at its job.
Can I switch from Linktree to Beacons (or back)?
Easily. Your links live in your social profiles, so switching means rebuilding the page on the other tool and pasting one new URL into each bio. Most people finish in under an hour, which is why it's worth trying both free tiers.
Do Linktree and Beacons take a cut of sales?
Beacons charges transaction fees on free-plan sales and reduces or removes them on paid plans. Linktree's selling features and third-party commerce integrations carry their own fee structures depending on what you use. In both cases, read the current fee schedule before you rely on either for revenue.
The short version: Linktree if the link is a signpost, Beacons if the link is a shop window, and if the link is the start of something bigger — a store, a site, a business — consider whether you want a link tool at all or one platform that includes it. All three free plans are real, and switching costs thirty seconds of bio editing, so the cheapest research is simply trying the one that fits your next twelve months.