URL Shorteners by Actual Monthly Cost (2026)

"Cheaper" is a slippery word in this market, because every shortener meters a different thing. Bitly meters links and analytics history. Short.io meters total links, not monthly. Dub meters tracked click events. So a price-only table is almost meaningless: $10 on one service and $10 on another buy different products.

This post compares what a given budget actually buys, using each vendor's own pricing page, checked in July 2026. We build QCK, and it is in the table too. Verify everything; the links are right there.

The entry-level paid tiers

Service	Cheapest paid plan	Billing	What it includes
Bitly Core	$10/mo	Annual only ($120 up front)	100 links/mo, 30 days of analytics history, no custom domain
Short.io Hobby	$5/mo	Monthly or annual	2,500 links total (lifetime, not per month), 100K tracked clicks/mo, 7 domains, 1 seat
Dub Pro	$30/mo (as listed at time of writing)	Monthly or annual	1,000 links/mo, 50K tracked events/mo, 1 year retention
QCK Basic	$19/mo	Monthly or annual	500 links/mo, 150K tracked clicks/mo, 1 year of history, 5 domains, custom aliases

Reading that honestly: Short.io Hobby is the cheapest way to get started if a lifetime pool of 2,500 links fits your usage. Bitly Core is the cheapest sticker price with monthly-style framing, but it is billed annually and keeps only 30 days of click data. QCK Basic costs more than both and includes an order of magnitude more link volume than Core, a year of history, and monthly billing.

Where the costs actually diverge: teams and history

Entry tiers are close together. The gap opens when you add the two things growing teams always end up needing.

Team seats. On Bitly, multiple users are an Enterprise feature; Free through Premium ($199 to $300/mo) are effectively single-seat. Short.io includes unlimited users starting on Team at $48/mo. Dub Business at $90/mo includes 10 users. QCK includes unlimited seats starting on Growth at $49/mo, with no per-seat pricing on any tier.

Analytics history. Bitly retains 30 days on Core, 4 months on Growth, 1 year on Premium, 2 years on Enterprise. Dub Pro keeps 1 year and Business 3 years. QCK keeps 6 months on Free, 1 year on Basic, 3 years on Growth, and unlimited history from Pro ($99/mo) up.

Put those together for a concrete case: a three-person team that wants ad-free branded links and at least a year of click history.

• Bitly: multiple users require Enterprise. Custom pricing, but the floor is above Premium's $2,388/yr.
• Short.io: Team at $48/mo covers the seats; unlimited links and clicks.
• Dub: Business at $90/mo covers 10 seats, 3-year retention, 250K events/mo.
• QCK: Growth at $49/mo covers unlimited seats, 3-year retention, 2,500 links and 1M tracked clicks per month.

The meters you should check before choosing

A few structural differences that do not show up in a price column:

1. Per-month versus lifetime links. Short.io's link counts are totals across the life of the account. Everyone else in this table resets monthly. Depending on your usage pattern, either model can be the better deal.
2. Clicks versus events. Dub meters "tracked events," which its plans meter as click, lead, and sale events combined. QCK meters tracked clicks, and journey events (the post-click activity) have their own separate, larger budget on every tier. Bitly free tracks clicks but does not show them to you.
3. What happens at the limit. Check each vendor's docs for whether links stop working, stop tracking, or keep working untracked when you hit a cap. On QCK, existing links never stop working; monthly limits only cap new link creation and tracked clicks.
4. Ads on the free tier. Since February 2025, Bitly's free links can show an advertising interstitial before redirecting, per Bitly's own support center. No other service in this table does that on any tier, QCK included.

The short version

• Cheapest possible start with a paid plan: Short.io Hobby at $5/mo, if lifetime link counting suits you.
• Cheapest real analytics with monthly billing: QCK Basic at $19/mo, with 1 year of history and 150K tracked clicks.
• Cheapest unlimited team: QCK Growth at $49/mo or Short.io Team at $48/mo, depending on whether you want deeper analytics (QCK) or unlimited raw volume (Short.io).
• Bitly is the incumbent with the deepest integrations catalog, and that is genuinely worth something. Just price the plan you will actually need, including seats and history, not the plan on the banner.

All figures verified against each vendor's public pricing page in July 2026 except where noted, and they change often. Treat this as a snapshot and check the live pages before deciding.