A link in bio looks like a free utility until it is asked to do a job. The moment a creator wants to sell a template, book a call, or keep more than 30 days of click data, the choice stops being cosmetic and starts being a monthly bill.
Three tools dominate that decision. Linktree is the default, Beacons is the feature-heavy challenger with a real free tier, and Stan Store is the storefront-first option with no free plan at all.
The short answer: creators who only need to point at things should stay on a free tier or build a page on their own domain, creators who sell occasionally should start on Beacons, and creators whose store is the business can justify Stan Store. The fee math below shows exactly where the lines fall, using plan prices checked on official pages on 2026-10-21.
What Each Tool Costs (Checked on Official Pages)
Pricing is where most link-in-bio comparisons go wrong, because plan names and fee structures change often. Two of the three tools could be verified directly. One could not.
Beacons lists four plans on its pricing page. Free costs $0 and carries a 9% transaction fee. Creator costs $10 a month ($8.33 a month billed at $100 a year) and also carries 9%. Creator Plus costs $30 a month ($25 a month billed at $300 a year) with 0% transaction fees. Creator Max costs $100 a month with 0% fees and higher limits.
Stan Store lists two plans on its own pricing blog page. Creator costs $29 a month or $300 a year. Creator Pro costs $99 a month or $948 a year. Stan states 0% transaction fees, with only the standard Stripe or PayPal processing fee on top, and there is no free plan, only a 14-day free trial.
Linktree is the unverified one. The official plans page describes four tiers (Free, Starter, Pro, Premium) and says prices are shown in local currency, but the fetched page gave no amounts and no seller-fee figures. Third-party roundups report Pro at about $15 a month and commerce fees of 9% to 12% on lower tiers, but those numbers conflict with each other and are treated here as unconfirmed.
| Linktree | Beacons | Stan Store | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes (unlimited links, basic analytics) | Yes (9% transaction fee) | No (14-day trial) |
| Entry paid plan | Not verified | $10/month, 9% fee | $29/month, 0% fee |
| 0%-fee commerce tier | Not verified | $30/month (Creator Plus) | $29/month (Creator) |
| Built-in courses and bookings | Limited to higher tiers per plan page | 1 course on lower plans without video hosting; unlimited courses with video from Creator Plus | Courses, booking, and community on Creator |
| Best at | Simple link hub | Cheap start, many features | Selling and booking |
The pattern worth noticing: Beacons Creator Plus at $30 and Stan Creator at $29 are priced almost identically, and both are $300 on annual billing. Any real difference between those two is features, not cost.
The Fee Crossover: Where 9% Stops Being Cheap
The 9% transaction fee on Beacons’ lower plans is the number that decides the whole comparison for sellers. A flat fee looks expensive early and cheap later. A percentage fee does the opposite.
The arithmetic, ignoring Stripe or PayPal processing fees that apply on top at every vendor:
- Beacons Free versus Stan Creator ($29): 9% of sales equals $29 at about $322 in monthly sales. Below that, the free Beacons plan costs less.
- Beacons Creator ($10 plus 9%) versus Beacons Creator Plus ($30, 0%): the two cost the same at about $222 in monthly sales. Above that, the $10 plan is the more expensive one.
- Beacons Creator Plus versus Stan Creator: a $1 monthly gap at list price, identical annually.
The takeaway is that a creator doing more than about $222 a month in product sales should not be on a 9% tier anywhere. A creator under that line is better off paying nothing than paying $29 for a storefront with no customers.
These figures come from listed prices only. They exclude tax, payment processing, and any usage caps, and the Linktree row is missing because its seller fee could not be verified.
What Creators Actually Say
Community threads are blunter than vendor pages, and they cluster around three complaints: analytics paywalls, subscription lock-in, and whether the paid tier delivers.
On the Linktree side, the analytics paywall comes up repeatedly. A poster in r/socialmedia described discovering that “if we wanted to check her click-rate older than 30 days we would need to pay $15/month to Linktree.” The replies were mostly a shrug toward owning the page. One commenter wrote, “Literally just crate a page on the website with links and track with tag manager,” and another laid out the fuller version: “Put the page on her own domain and track each outbound link as an event in GA4. She keeps the full history, the URL stays hers, and there is no migration when the next link-in-bio tool changes its free tier.”
That last point is the strongest argument against paying any of the three for plain link hosting. A page on a personal domain solves analytics history, SEO ownership, and vendor risk in one move.
On the Stan Store side, a seller in r/digitalproductselling made the lock-in case directly: “if I close Stan Store (end the subcription) all of the posts and links I shared are dead.” The same commenter framed the cost problem plainly: “If you are not making enough in sales just to cover the Stan Store monthly subscription, it come from your personal funds.”
Opinions on the upgrade tier were harsher. Another seller in the same thread advised, “Don’t use their pro plan. Your emails will just go to spam folders and the DM automation isn’t worth it compared to ManyChat.” A third, who runs a Stan store but prefers a different checkout tool, added a useful qualifier: “If you’re promoting on social media alone though Stan is very quick to get started.”
A single comment in r/InstagramMarketing put the Linktree support complaint more bluntly than most: “Linktree turned garbage over time, with a glitchy UI that does absolutely nothing, even after refreshing a few times.” That is one reviewer, not a trend, but it matches the broader sentiment that the free tier is thin and the support experience is automated.
Evidence here is limited to three threads. Several replies in them came from founders promoting their own link-in-bio products, and those were excluded.
Pick Linktree If, Beacons If, Stan If
A three-way comparison deserves a three-way decision, not a split-the-difference verdict.
Pick Linktree if the page is only a directory. Unlimited links and basic analytics on the free plan cover the job, and the Linktree name is the most recognizable of the three. It stops being the right call the moment click history older than 30 days matters or commerce is involved, because the pricing and seller fees then need checking and the third-party numbers disagree.
Pick Beacons if the creator is starting to sell but has not proven demand. The free plan allows one website page and 50 email sends a month per the pricing page, and the 9% fee only bites after sales arrive. Move to Creator Plus at $30 once monthly sales pass about $222, which is the point where the percentage becomes the more expensive part of the bill.
Pick Stan Store if selling is the point of the page. Stan bundles booking, courses, community, and AutoDM for Instagram on the $29 plan, with no percentage fee, and the setup speed is the product’s real advantage. The $99 Creator Pro tier is harder to defend. Its upsells, order bumps, and email flows are real features, but the r/digitalproductselling reports on deliverability and price put the burden of proof on Pro, not on the buyer.
The Case Against All Three
The three tools share a model: rent a page, pay monthly, and promote a URL that belongs to someone else. For a creator whose audience lives on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram, that URL is the single most-shared asset in the whole business.
The better default is a simple page on a domain the creator owns. Checkout can sit behind it on a platform built for selling, such as the options compared in Whop vs Gumroad for content creators, and list growth can run on a newsletter tool like those in Beehiiv vs Kit. Creators pitching brands can pair the page with a media kit from the Canva media kit alternatives roundup, and those building a paid community should read Skool vs Discord before layering yet another subscription on top.
The counter-argument is real. A custom page takes an afternoon and some maintenance, while Stan or Beacons takes ten minutes, and speed matters when a creator is still experimenting. For anyone in that stage, a free Beacons account is a reasonable bridge, and the risk is limited to a 9% fee on sales that did not exist yesterday.
The position here is that Beacons is the stronger pick for most creators, Stan Store is the right pick only when sales already justify $29 a month, and Linktree is the pick for people who want the least thinking. None of them is the right place to permanently park a creator’s primary link.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Stan Store worth $29 a month?
Only when the store actually sells. A creator with no product revenue yet is paying $29 a month for a page that a free Beacons or Linktree account can approximate. Once monthly sales comfortably cover the fee, Stan’s bundled booking, course, and email tools become the argument for it.
What is the cheapest way to sell digital products from a link in bio?
Beacons’ free plan has no monthly fee but takes a 9% transaction fee per its pricing page. Below roughly $322 in monthly sales that is cheaper than Stan’s $29 plan, and above roughly $222 the 0%-fee Beacons Creator Plus tier at $30 becomes cheaper than the $10 Creator tier.
Do Linktree, Beacons, and Stan Store charge extra fees on top of the monthly price?
Beacons lists a 9% transaction fee on its Free and Creator plans and 0% on higher tiers. Stan lists 0% transaction fees but states that the standard Stripe or PayPal processing fee still applies. Linktree’s seller fee could not be confirmed on its own page, so it should be checked before any commerce setup.
Do creators need a paid link-in-bio tool at all?
Not always. Community answers point to a simple page on a personal domain with outbound clicks tracked as events in Google Analytics 4. That setup keeps click history, keeps the URL, and avoids a migration if a vendor changes its free tier.
What happens to links if a Stan Store subscription ends?
One seller on r/digitalproductselling reported that every post and link already shared goes dead when the subscription is cancelled. That is a lock-in cost worth weighing before promoting a Stan URL across social profiles.
The Link in Bio Is the Last Place to Rent
Start free, move to a 0%-fee tier only when monthly sales pass about $222, and treat any URL that is not on a creator-owned domain as temporary. The tools differ less than their marketing suggests, and the fee math differs more than most reviews admit.
Every creator eventually ends up migrating a link in bio, so the cheapest plan is the one that makes leaving painless.
References
- Beacons official pricing page (plans, prices, transaction fees), checked 2026-10-21: https://beacons.ai/i/pricing
- Stan Store official pricing blog page (Creator and Creator Pro prices, 0% transaction fee, 14-day trial), checked 2026-10-21: https://stan.store/blog/stan-store-pricing/
- Linktree official plans page (tier names and features; prices not shown), checked 2026-10-21: https://linktr.ee/s/pricing/
- r/socialmedia, “Linktree Alternatives”: https://reddit.com/r/socialmedia/comments/1vbpr2c/linktree_alternatives/
- r/digitalproductselling, “Stan Store”: https://reddit.com/r/digitalproductselling/comments/1o962p7/stan_store/
- r/InstagramMarketing, “Can anyone suggest me an alternative to Linktree?”: https://reddit.com/r/InstagramMarketing/comments/1mduvpg/can_anyone_suggest_me_an_alternative_to_linktree/
