Bitly Alternative for QR Codes: An Honest Comparison

The difference that matters is not price, it is how each product counts. Bitly limits how many QR codes you create per month. PixlQR limits how many you keep active. If you make three codes and never touch them again, Bitly's cap is invisible. If you make thirty in one week and then stop, it is the only thing you will notice.

How do Bitly and PixlQR actually compare on price?

Bitly's figures below are taken from their own pricing page, checked on 26 August 2026. Competitor pricing is the part of any comparison article most likely to go stale, so open that link and confirm before you buy. If you find a difference, tell us and we will correct it.

	Bitly Free	Bitly Core	Bitly Growth	PixlQR Free	PixlQR Plus
Price	$0	$10/mo, billed annually	$29/mo billed annually, $35 monthly	$0	$6/mo billed annually, $9 monthly
QR codes	2 per month	5 per month	10 per month	2 active dynamic, unlimited static	10–1,000 active dynamic, unlimited static
Short links	5 per month	100 per month	500 per month	One per dynamic QR	One per dynamic QR
Scan analytics	Not included	30 days	4 months	180 days — totals and timeline; breakdowns need Plus	180 days, full
Custom domain	—	—	Complimentary	—	—

Two things stand out, and only one of them is about money.

The first is that PixlQR Plus costs less than Bitly Core while including analytics retention that Bitly only reaches on Growth. The second is that Bitly's link allowances are far larger than anything PixlQR offers, because Bitly is a link shortener that also makes QR codes, and PixlQR is a QR platform that also gives you a short link. If shortening links is the job, Bitly is built for it and we are not.

What does "2 QR codes a month" actually mean?

This is the single most misread line in QR pricing, and it is worth being precise about because it works differently at each company.

Bitly's limit is a creation allowance. You may create 2 QR codes in a calendar month on the free plan. Next month you may create 2 more. Codes you made previously continue to work; you simply cannot make new ones until the counter resets.

PixlQR's limit is a concurrent count. You may have 2 dynamic QR codes live at any one time on the free plan. There is no monthly reset because there is no monthly counter. If you delete one, you can immediately create another.

Neither model is universally better and it would be dishonest to claim otherwise:

• Making a handful of codes steadily over a year? Bitly's model is more generous. Twelve months at 2 per month is 24 codes; PixlQR would have you at 2.
• Making a batch for one campaign, then stopping? PixlQR's model is more generous. Ten posters in one afternoon is one month's Growth allowance at Bitly, or a single PixlQR Plus plan you keep using.
• Replacing codes as campaigns end? PixlQR's model is far more generous, because deleting a finished campaign's code returns the slot immediately.

Work out which of those three you are before comparing any prices at all.

Which one gives you scan data on the free plan?

Neither product hides this, but it is easy to miss. Bitly's own documentation states that the free plan "does not include click or scan analytics for short links or QR Codes." You get the codes; you do not get the numbers. Accessible scan history starts on Core at $10/month with 30 days of data. Whether Bitly records scans on the free plan and simply withholds the reporting is not something they document either way, so we make no claim about it.

PixlQR does include scan analytics on the free plan, and it is worth being exact about how much, because "free analytics" is a phrase that hides a lot.

During your 7-day Plus trial you see everything. After it ends, a free account keeps a genuinely useful core:

• Total scans and unique scans, as live numbers
• Scans over time, the full timeline chart across your 180 days of history

What moves behind the upgrade is the detail: breakdowns by country and device, the live scan map, growth against the previous period, and CSV or Excel export.

So the honest comparison is not "we give analytics away and Bitly does not". It is that a free PixlQR account can answer how many scans, and when — which is enough to tell a working poster from a dead one — while the questions of where and on what need Plus. On Bitly's free plan those numbers are not included at all, so there is nothing to read either way.

How long does each keep your scan history?

PixlQR keeps raw scans for 180 days on every plan, then aggregates each day into a summary and keeps that indefinitely. The daily totals survive; the individual scan records do not.

Bitly's retention ladder runs 30 days on Core, 4 months on Growth, 1 year on Premium, and 2 years on Enterprise.

So on retention, PixlQR holds scans longer than Bitly Core and roughly matches Bitly Growth at $29/month billed annually — on every plan, free included. Retention is not the same as depth, though: a free account reads totals and the timeline across those 180 days, while the country and device breakdowns need Plus at $6/month. And if you are comparing analytical depth rather than retention, Bitly Premium and Enterprise go considerably further than anything we offer, and they are priced accordingly.

Ask any provider what happens at the end of their window. Quietly discarding the detail is normal and defensible. Quietly discarding the totals is not, and you will only discover which one you bought at the moment you need last year's numbers.

When is Bitly the better choice?

Four situations, and they are not edge cases.

You need your own branded domain. Bitly's Growth plan includes a complimentary custom domain, so your links read go.yourbrand.com. PixlQR shortens to pxqr.io/:code and there is currently no way to bring your own domain. For a client-facing brand, that alone can decide it.

You shorten links in volume. 500 links a month on Growth is not a number PixlQR competes with. Our short link exists to serve a QR code, one per dynamic code.

You need several people in one account, at enterprise scale. PixlQR has no team seats, no collaborator invites, and no way to transfer a code to another account — whoever creates the account owns everything in it. We wrote about what that means for agencies; it is a genuine constraint, not a roadmap item we are being coy about.

Be precise about what Bitly offers here, though, because it is easy to assume any paid plan fixes it. Bitly lists "multiple users & group permission management", user management and group permissions as Enterprise features. Their pricing page does not state seat counts for Free, Core, Growth or Premium. So "Bitly does teams" is true at the top of their range and unverified in the middle of it — check it against the specific plan you are considering rather than trusting either of us.

You need enterprise procurement. SSO self-service setup, an activity log, an SLA, a security review, a signed DPA with negotiated terms. Bitly has that tier. We are a new product and we do not.

When is PixlQR the better choice?

You are making QR codes, not shortening links. This is the big one. PixlQR has 24+ QR types — vCard, WiFi, PDF, restaurant menu, event, review request, feedback form, app store, payment — and the non-URL ones are not just encoded text. A menu code opens a hosted menu page in seven languages. A vCard code opens a contact page that saves to the phone. A PDF code can serve a file you swap later without reprinting. Bitly's QR codes are principally URL codes pointing at pages you build and host yourself. If your answer to "what should this code do?" is anything other than "open a web page I already run", the type list is the deciding factor, not the price.

You want usable scan numbers without paying. A free PixlQR account shows total scans, unique scans and the timeline across 180 days — enough to tell a poster that is working from one that is not. Bitly's free plan does not include scan analytics at all, and their paid entry tier at $10/month gives 30 days.

Your codes are printed and long-lived. A menu, a poster, a piece of packaging. The concurrent-count model fits work where a small number of codes stay live for years, and changing where a printed code points is the whole reason to use a dynamic code in the first place.

You replace codes as campaigns end. Deleting a finished campaign's code returns the slot immediately, so an agency running four placements a quarter works comfortably inside a plan that a monthly creation cap would have exhausted by March.

You want to try the real thing before deciding. Every new account gets 7 days of Plus — full analytics, branding removed, file uploads — with no card. When it ends the account stays on Free permanently rather than locking you out.

You are cost-sensitive at small scale. $6/month billed annually for 10 dynamic codes with full analytics is the lower-priced option of the two compared here.

So which should you choose?

Three questions settle it, in this order. The first one that gets a yes decides.

Most people printing codes on menus, posters, packaging and business cards land on the third question. Most people managing thousands of marketing links land on the first two.

The fastest way to settle it is to make one. The builder below creates a real QR code from any link, no account needed to see it work. If you keep it, it carries into a free PixlQR account — 2 dynamic codes, unlimited static codes, and 7 days of Plus with no card.

Frequently asked questions

Can I move my existing Bitly QR codes to PixlQR? No, and neither can anyone else. A QR code's printed pattern encodes a specific short URL on a specific domain. Moving platforms means the destination domain changes, which means a new code and new printed material. Migrate at a natural reprint, not mid-campaign.

Does Bitly's free plan let me edit a QR code after printing it? Bitly states plainly that free-plan links cannot have their destination changed after creation and that redirects require a paid plan. Their documentation is less explicit about QR codes specifically, so check it against your own account before relying on it — this is exactly the kind of detail worth confirming rather than taking from a comparison article, including this one.

Is PixlQR's free plan a trial that expires? No. Every new account gets 7 days of Plus features, and when that ends the account stays on Free permanently — 2 dynamic codes, unlimited static codes, unlimited scans. No card is required at any point.

What happens to my codes if I stop paying for Plus? You get a 7-day grace period to renew. After that PixlQR keeps your newest 2 dynamic codes working — the free plan's allowance — and pauses the rest. A paused code stops redirecting and shows a notice instead, so a printed poster pointing at one goes dead.

Resubscribing brings them back. Staying on Free, you can choose which 2 run: delete a code you no longer need, then switch a paused one back on yourself from the dashboard. Deleting only frees the capacity — nothing reactivates automatically, so the choice of which codes live is always yours rather than ours. Static codes are unlimited and never affected by any of this.

We would rather you read that here than discover it on a live poster. It is also the question to ask every provider on your shortlist, including Bitly, because "what happens when I stop paying" is answered very differently across this category and almost never on the pricing page.

Which is better for an agency running client campaigns? It splits on one question: do your clients need links on their own branded domain? If yes, Bitly, because we cannot do that at any price. If no — and for a great many small agencies the answer is no, because the code is printed on a poster and nobody reads the URL — then PixlQR fits the work better: one code per placement, slots freed as campaigns end, and 180 days of scan history to report from. On shared access, note that Bitly documents group permissions at the Enterprise tier rather than across its paid plans, so price that properly before assuming a mid-tier plan solves it. Either way, read QR codes for agencies first — who owns the account matters more than the feature list, and that is the part agencies get wrong.

Read next

• Static vs Dynamic QR Codes: What's the Difference?
• How to Track QR Code Scans
• QR Codes for Agencies: Managing Client Campaigns