Bitly meters your clicks and bills you every month. Whooshly is one payment for the whole toolkit, short links, QR, UTM, and cards.
Yes, Whooshly is a strong Bitly alternative if you're tired of paying monthly for links. One payment covers thousands of campaign assets, unmetered clicks and scans, dynamic QR codes, a UTM builder, and digital cards. The honest caveat: Bitly has deeper enterprise reporting and a longer track record, so heavy analytics teams may still prefer it.
Comparison based on each vendor's publicly listed plans, checked August 2026. Prices change often — verify against the vendor's own pricing page before deciding.
At about $35/mo, Bitly runs roughly $420 a year and $1,260 over three years, and you still don't own it. Whooshly's Core is $49, paid once.
One payment, no renewal emails, no surprise price hikes.
Clicks and scans are unmetered on Core.
QR, UTM, and digital cards all included.
Bitly is the most recognized link shortener for a reason. Its analytics are deep, its redirect network is proven at massive scale, and it plugs into almost every marketing platform out of the box. For large enterprises with dedicated analytics teams, that maturity can be worth paying for.
Pick Bitly if you need enterprise-grade reporting, SSO and team governance, or deep integrations with an existing martech stack, and a recurring bill isn't a concern.
We re-resolved 2,765 short links that Common Crawl captured between 2014 and 2023. Of the 470 bit.ly links in that sample, 26% no longer resolved in 2026, marginally worse than the 25% average across all eight shorteners we measured, though far better than tinyurl.com at 36%. The sharper number is Bitly's other domain: j.mp came in at 10% of 325 links. Two domains, one company, a 16-point gap in survival. That is the whole argument for owning your redirect rather than renting it, because on a bit.ly link the decision was never yours to make.
Our link-rot study, 2,765 links re-resolvedDownload your link list, destinations, slugs, and tags, from Bitly as a CSV.
Paste your destinations and claim the same custom endings where they're free. Add QR codes and UTM tags in the same place.
Update the links in your posts and campaigns, or connect your own domain on Pro so links keep the same host.
Whooshly's Core is a one-time $49 payment, short links, dynamic QR codes, the UTM builder, and digital cards are yours for good, with no monthly fee. Bitly bills every month and meters your clicks. An optional $9/mo Pro add-on unlocks extras like custom domains and smart routing.
No. Clicks and scans are not metered. Core supports up to 10,000 campaign assets per account.
Yes. Every Whooshly short link and dynamic QR code can be re-pointed to a new destination at any time, the printed link or code never changes.
Yes. Export your Bitly links as a CSV and bulk-import them, keeping the same custom endings wherever they're still free, so a link you've already shared reads identically. Note what no tool can do: an existing bit.ly link keeps pointing at Bitly, because that domain isn't yours. Importing gets your list, your endings, and every new link onto a plan you own.
For almost everyone, yes. Bitly's paid plans start around $35/mo, about $420 a year and $1,260 over three years. Whooshly's Core is a single $49, so it pays for itself within the first two months and costs nothing after that.
Bring your links, own your data, and never see a renewal email again.