the comparison
Bitly is the link shortener everyone knows: fast redirects, QR codes, a link-in-bio builder, and analytics big marketing teams trust. But it’s built to shorten and track links, not to earn from them. It never applies your affiliate tag or builds a store-choice page at any price, and the one piece of smart routing it does offer, mobile deep linking, is locked to its $199/mo Premium tier. shownote* is built to monetize: store choice, your affiliate tag on every click, and in-app deep linking that opens the Amazon app with your tag intact, all free from your very first link, with regional Amazon routing on Prime Time. And shownote* gives you a branded storefront, one searchable page where every link you’ve made is shoppable and carries your tag: a link-in-bio that actually earns.
Bitly is the most recognized link platform in the world, with rock-solid redirect infrastructure at massive scale, QR codes, a link-in-bio builder, and analytics that big marketing teams rely on. If your job is to shorten, brand, and track links across campaigns, few tools are as proven.
| shownote* | Bitly | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Creators who earn from links | General link management for businesses & teams |
| Applies your affiliate tag | ✓Yes, on every click, every plan | No, at any tier |
| Store-choice page | ✓Yes | No |
| In-app deep linking (opens the Amazon app) | ✓Yes, iOS & Android, with your tag, free | Yes, but Premium only ($199/mo) |
| Free tier | ✓Free forever, up to 10 active links | Free, but only 5 links a month |
| Branded link domain | ✓Your own you.shwn.to subdomain, free | From Growth ($29/mo); not on Free or Core |
| International Amazon routing with your tag | ✓Yes, on Prime Time | No, at any tier |
| Repoint a link after you’ve posted it | ✓Any link, unlimited edits, free tier included | Not on Free; metered on paid (5/mo Core, 20/mo Growth) |
| Insights that tell you what to fix | ✓Yes, each leak with a one-click fix | Analytics dashboards that show what happened |
| Paid plan price | Flat $19/mo, unlimited links | $10 / $29 / $199 per month tiers |
| Branded storefront of all your links | ✓Yes, a searchable, shoppable page at your you.shwn.to subdomain, free | A link-in-bio builder, but links carry no affiliate tag |
| QR codes | Not today | Yes, mature and well-built |
Pricing and features compared as of June 2026 — we keep this current; verify a competitor’s latest on their own site.
shownote
shownote* exists to make a creator’s links earn. Paste a product URL and you get a branded choice page with your affiliate tag on every click, built around how creators actually earn: give buyers a choice of every store you earn from, Amazon plus the direct or specialty retailers your audience prefers, with your tag on each, and repoint the link once when a product moves. The link’s whole purpose is commission, so everything is pointed at that.
Bitly
Bitly is a general-purpose shortener and link-management platform. It makes a long URL short, brandable, and trackable, and it does that at enormous scale for marketing teams. That’s a real and useful job. It just isn’t monetization: a Bitly link makes your URL tidy and measurable, not money.
Bottom line: Bitly makes a link short and trackable; shownote* makes it earn. If your link’s job is affiliate commission, that difference is the whole story.
shownote
Intelligent routing is shownote*’s reason to exist, and the core of it is there from your first free link. A shownote* link decides at click time where each buyer should land: a store-choice page when there’s more than one store, your affiliate tag merged into the destination either way. And it does in-app deep linking too: on a phone, a shownote* Amazon link opens the Amazon app itself, on both iOS and Android, carrying your affiliate tag with it and falling back to the web if the app isn’t installed. (Prime Time adds routing each buyer to their own regional Amazon marketplace.) You never pay extra to unlock the deep linking or the tag, and that’s the part Bitly charges for.
Bitly
Bitly is a shortener first. Its one piece of intelligent routing, mobile deep linking that opens a destination inside a native app instead of a mobile browser, is locked to the Premium plan at $199/mo billed annually. It’s real and well-built, but it opens the app without putting your affiliate tag on the click, so it routes into apps rather than to where you earn.
Bottom line: Both can open a native app on a phone. Bitly gates that behind its $199/mo Premium tier and just opens the app; shownote* includes it free, and the deep link still carries your affiliate tag, so the in-app sale earns.
shownote
Every shownote* link carries your affiliate tag and can open a branded choice page listing each store you earn from, so the buyer picks where to shop and you earn wherever they land. You keep 100% of the commission; shownote* never takes a cut.
Bitly
Bitly shortens and tracks a link to a single destination you set. It doesn’t apply an affiliate tag, build a multi-store choice page, or route an Amazon click to the buyer’s home marketplace with your tag, at any tier, because monetization isn’t what it’s for. You’d point a Bitly link at one raw retailer URL and earn only what that single link earns.
Bottom line: No Bitly plan, free or $199/mo, puts your affiliate tag on a click or offers buyers a store choice. That’s shownote*’s core job, included on the free tier.
shownote
On Air is free forever, no card, up to 10 active links, with your own branded you.shwn.to subdomain included, which doubles as a storefront: one searchable, shoppable page of every link you’ve made, free. Prime Time is a flat $19/mo (or $190/yr) for unlimited links, and the smart routing lives in both. Going viral never raises your bill.
Bitly
Bitly’s Free plan allows 5 links a month, no branded domain, and no way to change a link’s destination later. Core ($10/mo, billed annually only) raises that to 100 links but still no custom domain; a branded domain starts at Growth ($29/mo); and mobile deep linking only appears on Premium, which jumps to $199/mo, with a wide gap and nothing in between.
Bottom line: For a creator, shownote*’s free tier does more of the job that matters, your tag, store choice, a branded subdomain, than Bitly’s paid tiers, and the smart routing you’d pay $199/mo for at Bitly is in shownote*’s free plan.
shownote
Repoint a shownote* link to a new destination as often as you need, on any plan, and every video that ever used it follows, with no scrubbing of old descriptions. Editing a link’s destination is never rationed, even on the free tier. Insights then flags clicks slipping to a store or region with no affiliate tag over a rolling 30 days, each with a one-click fix, and reports real clicks, never a dollar figure it can’t prove.
Bitly
Bitly treats changing a link’s destination as a metered feature it calls a “redirect,” and it isn’t on the free plan at all: a free Bitly link points where you first set it, for good. Paid tiers ration the edits, about 5 a month on Core, 20 on Growth, 110 on Premium, so repointing a back catalog when a Kickstarter ships or a store moves runs straight into a monthly cap. Its click analytics are strong, but they won’t tell a creator which affiliate gap to close next.
Bottom line: Repointing a link is the heart of “fix it once.” shownote* gives it to every link for free; Bitly keeps it off the free plan and rations it on paid. And only shownote* turns the clicks into “here’s the store you’re not tagging, fix it in one tap.”
There’s nothing to export: a Bitly link points at one URL, a shownote* link points at a choice page that earns. To switch, paste your product URLs and shownote* scrapes each into a branded choice page in under a minute, with your affiliate tag applied; on Prime Time, Migration Concierge rebuilds your back catalog with you. Keep Bitly for plain QR codes or campaign links if you like, and reach for shownote* on the links that are supposed to earn.
Start free, no card. Make a link that works in every store you earn from — and keeps working forever.
Make your first linkAlso comparing? shownote vs TinyURL