Linktree vs Beacons (2026): Plans, Fees, Store, Media Kit and Email

Beacons beats Linktree if you sell products or send media kits: its free plan includes a store, a daily-updating media kit and email, with a 9% seller fee. Linktree wins on polish and recognition for a plain list of links. Elev8or Bio is the third option, free with a 0% platform fee on Elite.

Try Elev8or Bio free if you want the store and media kit without choosing between these two.

Sources: Beacons pricing page, Linktree's pricing page (US prices read on November 1, 2026), and the Elev8or pricing page. Linktree localises prices, so yours may differ.

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Free plan: Beacons gives away more

Beacons Free is $0 forever and includes unlimited digital products, one course without video hosting, a daily-updating media kit, 50 email sends a month and 30 AI credits a day. Linktree Free covers unlimited links and basic analytics. For a creator who wants to sell something this week, Beacons needs no upgrade. Linktree needs one.

The cost on Beacons Free is the 9% seller fee. Linktree's free plan is reported to take 12% on digital products, plus payment processing on every plan. Linktree's pricing FAQ says it currently only charges $0.25 per payout and its help page says only that the fee "depends on your plan", so check the monetization section of your account before pricing anything.

Paid tiers: what each upgrade buys

• Linktree Starter, $9 a month ($7 annual): expanded appearance controls, link scheduling, more icons.
• Linktree Pro, $17 a month ($14 annual): advanced analytics, priority links, monetisation tools, SEO controls, listed 0% seller fee.
• Linktree Premium, $35 a month ($30 annual): everything in Pro plus link rules, AI integrations, all-time analytics, data export, social scheduling, unlimited Instagram auto-replies.
• Beacons Creator, $10 a month ($100 a year): 500 email sends, free custom domain for your page and store URLs. Seller fee stays 9%.
• Beacons Creator Plus, $30 a month ($300 a year): 0% seller fee, unlimited email sends, unlimited courses with video hosting, unlimited memberships, Buy Now Pay Later.
• Beacons Creator Max, $100 a month ($1,000 a year): same features as Creator Plus per the pricing page. We could not find what the extra $70 buys.

The Linktree Starter and Pro figures rose in the week of October 19 to 26, 2026, from $8 and $15 monthly. Many guides still print the old numbers. Premium did not move.

Seller fees: where the math flips

Beacons Creator Plus costs $30 a month and removes the 9% fee. Break-even versus Free is $30 / 0.09, about $333 a month in sales. Below that, stay on Free. Above it, upgrade. The $10 Creator tier does not change the fee, so it only makes sense for the custom domain and extra email.

On Linktree, using the reported 12% Free fee and the listed 0% on Pro at an annual price of $14, Pro pays for itself against Free at about $117 a month in sales ($14 / 0.12). The 12% relies on third-party fee tables, so treat it as an estimate. We covered the full set of numbers in our Linktree pricing breakdown.

On Elev8or Bio, the platform fee is 9% on Free, 5% on Pro at $9 a month and 0% on Elite at $25 a month, with a flat 5% payment processing fee on every sale on every plan. That makes the all-in cost 14%, 10% and 5%. Compare that to the processing line on the other two, not just the headline fee.

Store, media kit and email

Store. Beacons Free lets you sell unlimited digital products. Courses with video hosting, memberships and Buy Now Pay Later need Creator Plus. Linktree has selling tools on its paid tiers with a 0% fee on Pro and Premium. Elev8or Bio caps products at 3 on Free, 25 on Pro and unlimited on Elite.

Media kit. This is the clearest Beacons advantage over Linktree. The Beacons kit updates daily and sits on every plan, including Free. We found no media kit listed on Linktree's plan page. Elev8or Bio generates one automatically; the setup is covered on our media kit page.

Email. Beacons gives you 50 sends a month free, 500 on Creator and unlimited from Creator Plus. Linktree is reported to collect email and phone sign-ups on Free and add mailing list integrations on higher tiers, which means you export to another email tool. Fifty sends is a toy for a real list, so plan on Creator or an outside tool once you pass a few hundred subscribers.

Where Linktree wins

• Recognition. Fans and brands know the product, and the page loads cleanly.
• Simplicity. If you want a list of links and nothing else, Linktree has fewer settings to think about.
• Link scheduling, priority links and SEO controls sit in a clean tier ladder.
• No upgrade pressure from a store you do not use.

Where Beacons wins

• A usable store and media kit at $0.
• A stated 9% seller fee rather than one you have to dig for.
• Courses, memberships and a custom domain in a single product, with email sends built in.
• Daily AI credits (30 on Free, 300 on Creator) for writing help.

The weak spot is feature sprawl. Store, email, media kit and AI each do less than a dedicated tool. Our Beacons AI review goes through that in detail.

Who should pick which

• Pick Linktree if your page is a tidy list of links, you sell nothing, and you value a name people recognise.
• Pick Beacons if you sell digital products, need a media kit for brands, and want email on the same login.
• Pick Beacons Creator Plus only past about $333 a month in sales, or if you need unlimited courses and memberships.
• Pick Elev8or Bio if you want a free page with a store, email capture and media kit, plus a path to 0% platform fee at $25 a month.

Where Elev8or Bio fits

Elev8or Bio matches Beacons on the free page, store, email capture and auto-generated media kit, and adds click attribution per platform and a marketplace of paid brand campaigns. Beacons lets you sell more products on its free plan; Elev8or Bio caps Free at 3 products. See the head-to-head pages for Linktree and Beacons.

Try Elev8or Bio free. Start with the free plan and move to Pro or Elite only when your sales justify the fee gap.