Honest comparison

A Bitly alternative, including where Bitly wins

Bitly is the category default. Swyfty is the one that puts everything in one plan.

Bitly is the shortener everyone has heard of, and for good reason. It has been doing this for over a decade, the links do not break, and if you are handing a URL to a client or printing it on packaging, nobody is going to question it.

What sends people looking for an alternative is usually the same thing: the plan you can afford does not include the thing you actually wanted. Below is a straight comparison, including the parts where Bitly wins.

Jump to the table

Free forever plan. No credit card. Pro is $7 a month or $60 a year.

Bitly vs Swyfty, feature by feature

Bitly Swyfty
Short linksFree: 5 per month. Core: 100 per month at $10/moFree: 3 total. Pro: 5,000 at $7/mo
Custom slugsFree: 3 per month. Core: 100 per monthPro, no monthly cap
QR codesFree: 2 per month. Core: 5 per monthPro, SVG download, no monthly cap
Link in bioFree: 2 pages. Core: 5 pagesFree: 1 page. Pro: unlimited
Click analyticsUnlimited clicks on every planCountry, city, device, browser, OS, referrer, unique vs repeat
Branded custom domainYes, on paid plansNo, not on any plan
Team seatsYes, on higher plansNo
CSV export of visitorsOn paid plansPro
Hourly link health checksNoPro
REST APIYesYes, 60 requests per minute

Bitly figures below were read off bitly.com/pages/pricing on 2026-08-08. Pricing changes often, so check their page before you decide anything.

When Bitly is the better choice

If any of these is you, Bitly is the right call and this page has done its job.

  • You need a branded custom domain. Swyfty does not do this at all, on any plan, and for a lot of marketing work the domain in the link is the whole point.
  • More than one person needs access. Swyfty has no team seats, so there is no way to share an account properly.
  • You need unlimited clicks on a free plan. Bitly does not cap clicks anywhere, while Swyfty Free stops counting a link at 500 visits.
  • Procurement, SSO or compliance paperwork is involved. Bitly is an established vendor with the reviews and documentation to match, and a one person product is not going to clear a security questionnaire.
  • The link will outlive the tool. Bitly has a long track record of keeping old links alive, which is worth real money if you are printing something.

When Swyfty fits better

All of it on the $7 plan, with a free tier to check first.

  • You want the bio page, the QR codes and the shortener to be the same product with one analytics view, rather than three line items you reconcile by hand.
  • You create links in bursts. Bitly meters links per month, so a heavy week can put you over a cap you are otherwise nowhere near. Swyfty Pro counts 5,000 links in total instead.
  • You want QR codes without a per-month allowance. Bitly Core includes 5 a month, which is a strange number if you are making one per product.
  • You want to know a destination died before you send traffic to it. Swyfty Pro checks your URLs hourly.
  • $7 is the number that matters. Bitly Core is $10 a month for 100 links and 5 QR codes, and the features most people are actually shopping for sit further up the range.

The short version

If a branded domain or a team is in the picture, use Bitly. If you are one person who wants short links, real click data, QR codes and a bio page without assembling them from three subscriptions, that is the case for Swyfty.

Comparing something else?

Swyfty vs Linktree Swyfty vs Rebrandly

Try it before you switch anything

The free plan covers 3 links and a bio page with the analytics included, so you can see the click data before deciding whether it beats what you have.