The short answer
- Moving from Bitly Growth to Shlink costs $1,040 more in the first year, after setup and upkeep time (Stackcut's model: modeled, not measured).
- Shlink's official migration guide moves 4 kinds of data in full; 4 things stay behind. What moves
- 5 public accounts of making this switch: 3 switched, 1 switching, 1 evaluated. Read them
What Bitly and Shlink cost
List prices from each vendor's pricing page, as stored in the Stackcut catalog. Each price links its source.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly (per month) | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bitly Core | not shown | $10/mo | Annual plan only ($120 a year): 100 links and 5 QR Codes a month; 5 landing pages; 5 redirects a month; 30 days of click and scan data; UTM builder; bit.ly domain only. |
| Bitly Growth | $35/mo | $29/mo | $348 billed annually: 500 links and 10 QR Codes a month; 10 landing pages; 20 redirects a month; one complimentary custom domain for branded links; 120 days of click and scan data; bulk creation (100 per upload); 25,000 API requests a month. |
| Bitly Premium | $300/mo | $199/mo | $2,388 billed annually: 3,000 links and 200 QR Codes a month; 20 landing pages; 110 redirects a month; 1 year of data; city and device data; mobile deep linking; 50,000 API requests a month. |
- Bitly free plan: 5 links and 2 QR Codes a month; 2 landing pages; 3 custom back-halves a month; bit.ly domain only; no click history; links from free accounts open an interstitial page with a destination preview and an ad. bitly.com
- Shlink free plan: Free to self-host (MIT); no official hosted plan. The Shlink Web Client (app.shlink.io) is free. shlink.io
Shlink's plans aren't in the Stackcut catalog yet; check Shlink's own site.
Moving from Bitly to Shlink
What Shlink's importer carries over, what it leaves behind, and any help it offers switchers.
To Shlink
Official guide shlink.io · Tools: Shlink CLI short-url:import, Bitly API access token
Moves: Short URLs with their short codes/slugs (full); Tags (full); Custom domains (full); Original creation dates (full). shlink.io
Doesn't move: Click counts / visit history; Bitly click counts and per-link visit history; Bitly campaign structure and QR Code designs; The bit.ly domain itself - old bit.ly links keep resolving through Bitly unless your DNS moves. shlink.io
Watch out for:
- Visit/click statistics do not migrate from Bitly; tracking starts from zero. shlink.io
- The import assumes an empty Shlink instance; pre-existing older visits can make new visits be wrongly skipped. shlink.io
- Reserve at least 512MB of PHP memory or the long import can fail. shlink.io
Community guide blog.brownsugar.tw · Tools: Shlink CLI Bitly importer
Moves: Short URLs (custom slugs) (full); Tags (full); Custom domains (full); Creation dates (full). blog.brownsugar.tw
Doesn't move: Click counts; Bitly click counts/history (not importable as of Nov 2021). blog.brownsugar.tw
Watch out for:
- Click counts did not migrate; Bitly API exposes them but Shlink did not import them (as of 2021). blog.brownsugar.tw
- Shlink deploys only via Docker image or PHP CLI; upgrades are CLI-driven. blog.brownsugar.tw
- The web client is a separate static app; author protects it with htpasswd. blog.brownsugar.tw
From each destination's own migration docs and switching pages, plus community write-ups where no official guide exists, each checked against its page. Confirm terms on the linked page before you rely on an offer.
People who moved from Bitly to Shlink
5 public accounts of leaving Bitly: 3 switched, 1 evaluated, 1 switching. Summaries are ours; each links the original, and each was checked against its page before it appeared here.
A self-hoster asked Postiz to support self-hosted Shlink instances as a URL shortener instead of being limited to Bit.ly, calling Shlink the leading open-source alternative with a full REST API; the request was closed as not planned in June 2026. GitHub
Game studio Future Proof Games replaced Bitly with Shlink for links to shared systems and clusters in its May 2025 'Razor' release of Exploit: Zero Day, alongside a payment-processor switch, noting players shouldn't notice any behavioral difference. Future Proof Games
The LAY blog author left Bitly in 2021 after free-tier cuts, evaluated YOURLS, Kutt and Shlink, self-hosted Shlink, imported their Bitly links via the official CLI importer, and reports about a year of trouble-free use, recommending Shlink. LAY ‧ Blog
GitHub user brownsugar, preparing a Bitly-to-Shlink link migration, asked whether Bitly click stats could be imported so counts could later be synced; maintainer acelaya said stats import was intended eventually but not a near-term priority. GitHub
A poster on r/SideProject says Bitly's new login requirement and 10-link daily limit broke their workflow, so they built their own free URL shortener using React, Shlink, Express and Web Risk, and invited others in the same boat to try it. Reddit
FAQ
Is Shlink cheaper than Bitly?
Modeled, not measured: moving from Bitly Growth to Shlink costs $1,040 more in the first year, after setup and upkeep time at $50/hour. It depends on your plan, seats and usage. the math
Can I move my Bitly data to Shlink?
Shlink's official guide moves: Short URLs with their short codes/slugs; Tags; Custom domains; Original creation dates. It doesn't move: Click counts / visit history; Bitly click counts and per-link visit history; Bitly campaign structure and QR Code designs; The bit.ly domain itself - old bit.ly links keep resolving through Bitly unless your DNS moves. shlink.io
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