reRoute vs Bitly
Bitly built this category and their infrastructure is genuinely solid. This page is not going to pretend otherwise. What it will do is lay out what each product costs and what each one limits, with a link to the source for every number, so you can decide whether the price difference is justified.
Pricing checked 18 July 2026. If you find something out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
The short version
If you need a recognised domain and an enterprise procurement process, Bitly is the safer purchase and you should buy it. If you want to change where your printed codes point without a monthly allowance, put more than one person on the account without a sales call, and keep your scan history longer than 30 days, reRoute does that for roughly half the price of Bitly’s cheapest paid plan.
Head to head
Including the two where Bitly wins.
Changing where a printed code points
Bitly
Metered. None on Free, 5 a month on Core, 20 on Growth, 110 on Premium.
reRoute
Unlimited on every paid plan. We do not count them.
Entry paid price
Bitly
$10 a month on Core, billed annually only.
reRoute
$4.99 a month, or $3.99 billed annually.
A second person on the account
Bitly
Enterprise only, quote required. Premium at $199 a month is single seat.
reRoute
5 people on Pro at $4.99. Unlimited on Enterprise at $19.99.
Analytics history
Bitly
None on Free, 30 days on Core, 120 days on Growth, 1 year on Premium.
reRoute
Kept for the life of the account on paid plans.
Ads in front of your visitors
Bitly
Free links show an interstitial ad page since February 2025.
reRoute
Never. Free links redirect straight through.
Free static QR codes
Bitly
2 a month.
reRoute
Unlimited, generated in your browser, no account.
Brand recognition
Bitly
The bit.ly domain is universally recognised and trusted by users.
reRoute
rrte.link is new. Nobody has seen it before.
Track record
Bitly
Operating since 2008, with the scale and stability that implies.
reRoute
New. We have not yet been tested by years of production traffic.
How Bitly’s free tier has changed
Worth seeing as a sequence rather than a snapshot, because it tells you what to expect next. Each row was checked against an archived copy of Bitly’s pricing page on that date.
| Date | Free links | Free QR codes |
|---|---|---|
| Before Dec 2018 | 10,000 / month | Not offered |
| June 2022 | 50 / month | Unlimited |
| June 2023 | 10 / month | Unlimited |
| Sept 2023 | 10 / month | 2 / month |
| Jan 2025 | 5 / month | 2 / month |
| Today | 5 / month | 2 / month |
Over the same period Growth and Premium list prices did not move. The revenue came from the free tier, from metering redirects, and from a 25 percent increase on the entry Core plan in early 2025. Sources: pricing page, link limit changes, ads on free links.
And the rest of the market
Bitly is not your only alternative, so here is the wider field.
| Entry paid plan | Per month | Links | Destination edits | People included | Analytics kept for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| reRoute ProYou are here | $3.99 | Unlimited | Unlimited | 5 | Unlimited |
| Bitly Coreannual only | $10 | 100 / month | 5 / month | Just you | 30 days |
| Dub Pro | $27 | 1,000 / month | Unlimited | 3 | 1 year |
| Rebrandly Essentials | $8 | 250 / month | Unlimited | No team access | Not published |
| Short.io Pro | $15 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Not published | Not published |
Your numbers
Based on each vendor’s published annual pricing, checked 18 July 2026. Sources are linked in the comparison below.
You keep about
$300
every year, for more usage than you have now
Fair questions
- Is reRoute a drop-in replacement for Bitly?
- For creating links, QR codes, tracking scans and routing by device or country, yes. Import your CSV and carry on. What cannot move is any link on the bit.ly domain itself, since no provider can transfer another provider's domain. Those keep working on Bitly's side until you replace them.
- Why is reRoute so much cheaper?
- Static QR codes are rendered in your browser instead of on our servers, so the free tier costs us close to nothing. Redirects are inexpensive to operate. We set Pro at operating cost plus a margin rather than at what the market leader charges.
- What happens to my links if reRoute disappears?
- A fair question for any newer vendor. Two things reduce the risk. Use your own domain on Enterprise, so the links are yours regardless of who runs the redirect. And export your links and scan history to CSV whenever you like, no support ticket needed.
- Does Bitly delete links if I stop paying?
- Their documentation says bit.ly links keep working after a downgrade. The risk is narrower and worth understanding: if you used the complimentary custom domain bundled with a paid plan, Bitly stops renewing that registration when you downgrade, and links on it stop working. Deleted links return a 404, and accounts removed for inactivity lose their redirects.
Try it before you switch anything
The QR generator is free and needs no account. Make one, scan it, see how it feels. Import your Bitly CSV whenever you are ready.