Bitly vs TinyURL vs Short.io vs Dub vs Bublink (2026)

Search “best URL shortener” and you’ll see the same five names cycle through the first page: Bitly, TinyURL, Short.io, Dub, and — more recently — Bublink. They all shorten links. The harder question is the one that doesn’t get answered up front: which one fits your pattern of use?

This post puts all five on the same six axes so you can compare them like-for-like — pricing, custom domains, analytics, QR codes, UTM, and the redirect experience itself. At the end, you’ll find a short “this one fits you if…” guide for each.

The Six Axes

Pick the right axes first and the right tool falls out almost on its own.

1. Pricing — the entry-level paid plan, since the free tier is just the on-ramp.
2. Custom domains — can you use go.brand.com on the free plan, and how many domains on paid?
3. Analytics — what do you actually see on the free plan (geo, device, time-of-day) and how long is the data retained?
4. QR codes — does every short link come with a QR automatically, or is it a paid add-on?
5. UTM campaigns — how much friction is there to spin up source/medium variants of a single link?
6. Redirect experience — countdown ads or interstitials between click and destination? And how cluttered is the dashboard?

A One-Paragraph Profile of Each

Bitly. The category’s de facto standard, especially inside larger marketing teams. The free tier is tight on purpose — 10 links a month, 2 QR codes, no detailed analytics, no custom domain — so most teams treat Bitly as a paid tool by design. Real analytics start at the Business plan ($29/user/month). See pricing →

TinyURL. The original. It’s been shortening links since the late ’90s, and the strength is exactly that simplicity: no signup needed, paste and go. The free plan gives you 100 links a month but no click analytics, which is fine for one-off use and a poor fit for anything you’d want to measure. See pricing →

Short.io. The most generous free plan in the group — 1,000 branded links, 50,000 tracked clicks, 5 custom domains, and full analytics, all at $0. The cheapest paid tier is $5/month (Hobby), but the practical “real” plan is Pro at $18/month. See pricing →

Dub. Open-source on GitHub, modern stack, and unique in the group for treating attribution as a first-class feature — it tracks not just clicks but downstream conversions and revenue. Free is small (25 links, 30-day analytics retention), and paid starts at $25/month (Pro), which puts it at the higher end of entry pricing. See pricing →

Bublink. Designed around one sentence: Hyper Simple, No ads. You can shorten without signing up, every link gets a QR automatically, and the Pro plan is $7/month with the things most teams actually need — a 7×24 heatmap, 365-day retention, and CSV export. See the about page →

The Comparison Table

	Bitly	TinyURL	Short.io	Dub	Bublink
Free links / month	10	100	1,000	25	30
Free analytics depth	clicks only	none	full	30-day retention	basic
Free custom domains	0	1	5	0	1
Cheapest paid plan	$8/mo (Starter)	$9.99/mo (Pro)	$5/mo (Hobby)	$25/mo (Pro)	$7/mo (Pro)
QR codes	2/mo on free	automatic	automatic	automatic	every link
UTM variants	paid tiers	paid tiers	yes	yes	yes
Interstitial ads	none	none	none	none	none

Pricing and limits reflect each provider’s public pricing page as of May 2026 and can change. Double-check the official page before you pull out a card.

Two things stand out in the table. First, Short.io’s free tier is the most generous by a wide margin, and on the paid side, Bublink Pro at $7 and Bitly Starter at $8 sit closest to each other at the entry. Second, none of these five force a countdown screen or interstitial ad on the redirect — that revenue model lives in a different category (adf.ly, linkvertise, and similar). Bublink’s “no ads” framing is broader than the redirect: it extends to the dashboard itself — no upsell modals, no onboarding popups, no toast spam.

Which One Fits You

The same set of features lands very differently depending on how you actually use short links. You don’t need to try all five — you just need to recognize which row you’re in.

Bitly — when you need an industry standard

If your team is already on Bitly, or your reporting stack assumes Bitly links, the compatibility cost of switching is the highest single line item. Just plan to be on Business or above; the free plan won’t tell you what you need to know.

TinyURL — when “short” is the whole job

If the link is one-off — pasted into a single email, taped to a flyer, never looked at again — TinyURL is the most efficient choice. The minute you want to know who clicked, look elsewhere.

Short.io — when you want to live on the free plan

A thousand links a month with full analytics and five custom domains is hard to beat at $0. Just price out the Pro tier ($18) before you commit, since the step up from free is a real one.

Dub — when revenue attribution is the point

If you need to know which link made which sale — not just which got clicked — Dub’s attribution is the closest fit in this group. The $25 entry assumes the answer is worth more than the price, which it usually is for paid acquisition teams.

Bublink — when you want the tool to disappear

No upsell modals, no onboarding tour, every link with a QR, $7 for the heatmap and a year of data and CSV. If you’d rather your shortener stop being a thing you think about, this is the row you’re in. Thirty seconds to learn, years to use.

In One Page

• All five shorten links. The differences are in free-tier generosity, entry-paid pricing, analytics depth, and operational simplicity.
• The most generous free tier is Short.io. The lowest entry price is Short.io Hobby ($5), then Bublink Pro ($7).
• If “the tool gets out of the way” is your top priority, Bublink is the closest answer — no signup to start, no ads on the redirect, no clutter on the dashboard.

Click a Bublink, land instantly. Start shortening at bublinks.com →

Read next: How to Set Up a Custom Domain for Branded Short Links — go from bit.ly/3xK9aB1 to go.yourbrand.com/sale in five minutes.