Best link in bio platforms for creators: tools, fees and affiliate marketing compared
Almost every link in bio roundup ranks these tools on how many blocks and themes they ship, which is the one thing that stopped mattering years ago. All of them let you publish a page of links. What separates them is the fee model, and the fee model is the part that quietly decides how much of your revenue you keep. Read the pricing pages closely and a pattern shows up fast: these platforms are priced around creators selling their own digital products, because the seller fee is levied on your sales. That is a good deal if you sell courses, presets or coaching. If your money comes from recommending other people's products and collecting affiliate commission, you are looking at a completely different problem, and the plan most comparison articles push you toward is taxing revenue you do not have. This page puts the real published numbers side by side, works out where each plan actually becomes the cheaper one, and is honest about which platform wins for which kind of creator.
The short answer
The best link in bio platform depends on which kind of income you are actually collecting, because these tools price around selling your own digital products rather than around affiliate commission. Linktree runs $0 to $35 a month with a seller fee of 12% on Free and 9% on Starter and Pro, dropping to 0% only on the $35 Premium plan. Beacons runs $0 to $90 with a 9% seller fee on Free and Creator Pro and 0% from the $30 Store Pro plan up. Stan Store has no free plan at $29 or $99 a month and charges no platform fee at all. Every one of those seller fees applies to products you sell yourself, so if your income is affiliate commission on other people's products the fee never touches you, and none of these platforms supplies an affiliate catalog. Favly is the storefront option built for that second case, covering AI, SaaS and tech tools that pay recurring commission.
Published pricing, re-checked 10 August 2026 · No commission fee · Last updated August 2026
Curated by · affiliate links clearly labeled
Estimated monthly
from monetized favorites
$
Estimated and illustrative, not a guarantee. Real earnings depend on your audience and what fans buy.
■ at a glance
Link in bio platform pricing and seller fees compared
Subscription prices and seller fees taken from each platform's own published pricing on 10 August 2026. Seller fees apply to products you sell through the platform, not to affiliate commission earned elsewhere. Stripe processing of roughly 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction applies on top of every plan listed here, on every platform. Pricing changes without notice, so confirm on the vendor page before you commit.
| Platform | Monthly price and seller fee | Who it genuinely suits |
|---|---|---|
| Linktree | $0 / $8 / $15 / $35, seller fee 12% then 9%, 0% on Premium | The default and the easiest to publish. Annual billing brings the paid tiers to $5, $12 and $24. The 12% fee on the free plan is the highest seller cut in this comparison, and 0% arrives only on the $35 Premium tier |
| Beacons | $0 / $10 / $30 / $90, seller fee 9%, 0% from Store Pro | Wider than a link page: digital products, a media kit, email tools and Instagram DM automation are on the free plan. Annual billing is about $8.33, $25 and $75. Best value of the three if you sell your own products and want the extras bundled |
| Stan Store | $29 or $99, no free plan, 0% platform fee | The only one with no free tier and the only one charging nothing on sales at any price point. A 14-day trial is offered. Built around selling courses, coaching and digital products, and priced to make sense once you are already selling |
| Favly | Storefront with an affiliate and SaaS catalog | A different shape of product: instead of taxing what you sell, it supplies the programs you earn from, including AI, SaaS and tech tools that pay recurring commission on subscriptions. Weaker than the three above if your plan is to sell your own courses |
| The fee nobody escapes | Stripe 2.9% plus $0.30 | Payment processing sits underneath every plan on every platform, including the ones advertising 0% fees. A 0% platform fee means zero platform cut, not zero cost per transaction |
| What a seller fee taxes | Your own product sales only | The single most misread line in link in bio pricing. Affiliate commission is paid to you by the merchant or network, so it never passes through the platform and no seller fee applies. Creators earning mainly from affiliate links routinely upgrade to remove a fee they were never paying |
| Affiliate catalog included | None of the three | Linktree, Beacons and Stan Store all let you paste an affiliate link you already have. None of them gives you programs to join. Finding, applying to and tracking the programs stays entirely your job on all three |
| Free plan reality | Cheapest until roughly $300 a month in sales | Free tiers carry the highest percentage cut, so they are cheapest at low volume and the most expensive once sales grow. The crossover points are worked out below and they land lower than most creators expect |
■ how to choose
How to pick the best link in bio platform for how you actually earn
Work out the crossover point before you upgrade, it is one division
Compare the subscription saving against the fee saving at your real sales volume and the right plan picks itself. Linktree Premium at $35 with no seller fee beats Linktree Pro at $15 plus 9% once you clear about $222 a month in sales, and beats the free plan once you clear about $292. Beacons Store Pro at $30 with no fee beats the Beacons free plan at 9% above roughly $333 a month. Stan Store at $29 matches a 9% fee at about $322 a month in sales. Below those numbers the cheaper plan genuinely is cheaper and upgrading costs you money. Above them the percentage compounds against you every month. Run the division on your own figure rather than on the plan comparison table, because the tables are built to make the middle tier look obvious.
Separate what you sell from what you recommend, they are different businesses
This is the distinction that decides the whole choice and almost no roundup makes it. Selling your own digital products means you collect the full price and the platform takes a percentage, so the seller fee is the number that matters and Stan Store or a 0% tier wins on arithmetic. Earning affiliate commission means a merchant pays you separately for sending a buyer, the money never touches the link in bio platform, and the seller fee is irrelevant. What matters in the second case is whether you have good programs to promote at all, which is a question none of these three answer. Most working creators do some of both, so the useful question is which side is producing your income now and which side you want to grow.
Check whether recurring commission is even possible on what you promote
Physical product affiliate links pay once, usually between 1% and 10%, and the buyer has to come back and buy again for you to earn again. Software and SaaS programs commonly pay 20% to 50% and many keep paying every month the customer stays subscribed. That difference matters more than any platform fee on this page: a single retained software referral at $50 a month and 25% recurring pays $150 over a year, while a 9% fee on $150 of product sales costs $13.50. If your audience buys tools rather than merchandise, the catalog you have access to is worth more than the fee tier you are on.
Count the whole cost, not the advertised one
A plan advertising 0% platform fees still runs payments through Stripe at roughly 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction, and on small order values that fixed 30 cents is heavier than it looks. A $9 digital product pays about $8.44 after processing before any platform fee is applied, which is a 6.2% effective cut on its own. Add a 9% seller fee on top and you are at roughly 15%. Creators comparing a 9% platform against a 0% platform frequently forget that the floor is not zero on either, and that low-priced products carry the worst effective rate.
Do not pay for a custom domain tier you will not use
Custom domains, removing platform branding and advanced themes are the features that most often justify an upgrade in the marketing copy, and they move revenue less than any other line on the pricing page. Branding removal is worth real money to a business selling to other businesses and close to nothing to a creator whose audience arrives from a social profile they already trust. If you are upgrading, upgrade for the fee tier or for a capability you will use weekly. The cosmetic features are the cheapest part of the decision to defer.
■ how it works
How to set up a link in bio that actually earns
Write down where your income came from last month
Split it into your own product sales and affiliate commission and note the totals. Two minutes here settles a decision most creators agonise over for a week, because the fee comparisons above only apply to the first number and the catalog question only applies to the second. If affiliate commission is the bigger line, stop optimising your seller fee tier.
Pick the plan using the crossover figure, not the feature grid
Take your monthly product sales and check it against the crossover points above. Under about $300 a month in sales, the free tiers are genuinely the cheapest option on both Linktree and Beacons despite the higher percentage. Over it, the flat-fee plans win and keep winning. Revisit the number every few months, because the right answer changes as sales grow and nobody sends you a notification when it does.
Put every recommendation on one page instead of scattering links
The practical failure of link in bio pages is not the platform, it is that recommendations end up spread across old captions, expired stories and a bio link that changes weekly. Readers who go looking a week later find nothing. A single browsable storefront at favly.com/@you keeps the tools and products you recommend in one place, attaches disclosure automatically, and makes a dead link a one line edit rather than an archive hunt.
Add recurring programs alongside whatever you sell
Whatever platform you land on, the biggest available change to your monthly total is usually adding software recommendations to content that currently links only physical products or your own offers. Recurring commission starts small and looks unimpressive for two or three months, then crosses over a one-time payout and keeps climbing. Judging it on month one is the most common reason creators drop the part of the mix that would have paid them most.
■ if it is not a fit
Why most link in bio comparisons send creators to the wrong plan
The standard roundup compares these platforms on feature counts: how many blocks, how many themes, whether there is an email tool, whether the analytics are good. Those lists are easy to write and they rank well, but they describe products that have converged. Every platform here publishes a page of links, embeds video, sells a digital product and shows you click counts. Choosing between them on feature parity is choosing between near-identical things, which is why so many of these articles end with a shrug and a recommendation for whichever tool pays the highest affiliate commission to the person who wrote it. The number that actually differs is the fee model, and it differs in a way that maps onto a real split in how creators earn. If you sell your own products, the seller fee is a direct tax on revenue and the arithmetic above is the entire decision: at meaningful volume a flat-fee plan on Stan Store or a 0% tier on Beacons or Linktree saves real money, and below roughly $300 a month in sales the free tiers are genuinely cheaper. That case is well served by all three and we are not the better answer for it. The case nobody serves is the other one. A creator whose income is affiliate commission has a platform-fee problem of exactly zero dollars, because merchants pay that commission directly and it never routes through the link page. What that creator actually lacks is a supply of programs worth promoting, especially in software, where rates run 20% to 50% and often recur monthly instead of paying once. Linktree, Beacons and Stan Store all let you paste an affiliate link. None of them hands you one. That gap is the reason this page exists, and it is also the honest limit of what we do: if your plan is to sell a course to your audience, the three platforms above are built for that and we are not.
What Favly does differently
- ✓ No follower gate and no application queue. Claim favly.com/@you and start today.
- ✓ Built for the AI tools, SaaS and tech gear you already recommend.
- ✓ Recurring commissions: subscription tools can pay every month a fan stays subscribed.
- ✓ Affiliate income and brand deals in one storefront, with #ad disclosure by default.
■ side by side
Best link in bio platforms and Favly, honestly compared.
These are capable products and for creators selling their own digital goods several of them beat us outright. The comparison below is specifically about the affiliate side, which is what they leave to you.
| Capability | Favly | Best link in bio platforms | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Publishes a link in bio page | Table stakes now. Every platform in this comparison does this well | ||
| Seller fee on your own product sales | Not our model | 0% to 12% | Linktree 12% Free and 9% paid, 0% on Premium. Beacons 9%, 0% from Store Pro. Stan Store 0% at $29 |
| Sells your own courses and digital products | Limited | Genuinely their strength, and Stan Store in particular is built entirely around it | |
| Supplies an affiliate program catalog | × | All three accept affiliate links you already have. None of them provides programs to join | |
| AI, SaaS and software tools in the catalog | × | Not something any general link in bio tool carries | |
| Recurring commission on subscriptions | × | Not applicable to their model, since they are not affiliate networks | |
| Follower or application gate | None | None | Linktree, Beacons and Stan Store are all open to anyone. This is not a differentiator against them |
| Free plan available | Partial | Linktree and Beacons yes, Stan Store no. Stan starts at $29 a month with a trial | |
| Automatic affiliate disclosure | × | Left to the creator on all three, which is an FTC exposure worth knowing about |
■ faq
Questions creators ask about Best link in bio platforms.
What is the best link in bio platform?
There is no single winner, because the platforms split cleanly by how you earn. If you sell your own digital products, Stan Store at $29 a month with no platform fee is the cheapest at volume, Beacons bundles the most for the money, and Linktree is the simplest to publish. If your income is affiliate commission, none of those seller fees applies to you and the deciding factor becomes whether the platform gives you programs to promote, which is where a storefront with an affiliate catalog fits instead.
What is the best link in bio for affiliate marketing?
For affiliate marketing specifically, the fee tiers that dominate these comparisons are irrelevant, because affiliate commission is paid to you by the merchant and never passes through the link page. What matters is access to programs, whether the products can pay recurring commission, and whether disclosure is handled for you. Linktree, Beacons and Stan Store will all host affiliate links you already have. A storefront built around an affiliate and SaaS catalog is the better fit when you need the programs themselves.
Is Linktree or Beacons better?
Beacons gives you more for less if you sell digital products: its free plan includes selling, a media kit, basic email tools and Instagram DM automation, and its 9% seller fee is lower than Linktree's 12% on the free tier. Linktree is simpler, more familiar to audiences and quicker to publish, and its Premium plan removes the fee at $35 against Beacons removing it at $30. For a pure page of links the difference is small. For selling, Beacons is the stronger free option.
Is Stan Store worth $29 a month?
It is worth it once you are selling enough that a percentage fee costs more than the subscription, which happens around $322 a month in sales against a 9% competitor fee. Below that, a free plan on Beacons or Linktree costs you less even with the higher percentage. Stan Store also has no free tier, so there is no way to grow into it gradually, though a 14-day trial is offered. The 0% platform fee is genuine, but Stripe processing of about 2.9% plus $0.30 still applies.
Do link in bio tools take a cut of affiliate commissions?
No. Affiliate commission is paid to you by the merchant or affiliate network based on their own tracking, so it never passes through the link in bio platform and there is nothing for the platform to take a cut of. The seller fees these platforms publish apply only to products you sell through their checkout. This is the most commonly misunderstood point in link in bio pricing and it causes creators to upgrade specifically to remove a fee they were never being charged.
What is the best free link in bio tool?
Beacons has the more generous free plan, since it includes digital product selling, a media kit, basic email tools and DM automation at a 9% seller fee, against Linktree's free tier at 12%. Stan Store has no free plan at all. Worth knowing that free tiers carry the highest percentage cut by design, so they are the cheapest option only until you are selling roughly $300 a month, after which a paid flat-fee plan costs less.
How much do link in bio platforms cost?
Linktree runs $0, $8, $15 or $35 a month, dropping to $5, $12 and $24 on annual billing. Beacons runs $0, $10, $30 or $90, or about $8.33, $25 and $75 annually. Stan Store is $29 or $99 a month, or $25 and $79 annually, with no free plan. On top of the subscription, seller fees of 9% to 12% apply on the lower tiers of Linktree and Beacons, and Stripe processing of about 2.9% plus $0.30 applies everywhere.
Can you make money with a link in bio page?
Yes, through three routes that pay very differently. Selling your own digital products keeps the most per sale but requires you to have a product. Affiliate commission requires no product and pays 1% to 10% on physical goods or 20% to 50% on software, often recurring on subscriptions. Brand deals pay per post rather than per sale. The creators earning most from a link page usually run at least two of the three, and the affiliate side scales without the work of building and supporting a product.
▲ go deeper
If the affiliate side is what you are building, an affiliate link in bio and link in bio for creators cover how the page itself works, while affiliate storefronts explains the browsable version and affiliate link management covers keeping links organised once several programs run at once. Affiliate marketing tools for creators has the wider stack.
For a platform by platform view, the Linktree alternative comparison, the Beacons alternative comparison and the Stan Store alternative comparison go deeper on each. On the earning side, SaaS affiliate programs and recurring affiliate programs cover the rates that pay monthly, and whether link in bio tools take a cut of your sales works through the fee arithmetic in full.
▲ More on storefronts, links and getting paid
No application. No follower gate.
Claim your favly.com/@you storefront and turn the AI tools, software and gear you already recommend into affiliate commissions and brand deals.