Linktree vs Beacons in 2026: 8 Plans, 3 Fee Rates, and the $300 Line

Key Takeaways:

Linktree charges 12% of every digital product sale on its free plan, 9% on Starter and Pro, and 0% on Premium, according to its own fee article
Beacons charges 9% on Free and Creator and 0% on Creator Plus and Creator Max, according to its own transaction fee page
Stripe's 2.9% plus $0.30 applies on every plan on both platforms, so processing cancels out of the comparison and the seller fee is the whole decision
At $1,000 a month in sales the cheapest plan on either platform is the most expensive one to sell on: Linktree Free costs $120 and Linktree Premium costs $35
The upgrade pays for itself at $292 a month on Linktree and $333 a month on Beacons. Below that, stay free. Above it, paying more costs you less

Both of these companies sell you the same thing: a page that holds your links and takes a cut when somebody buys through it. The page is close to a commodity in 2026. The cut is not. Between them, Linktree and Beacons publish eight plans and three different seller-fee rates, and the rate moves in a direction most creators do not expect. The plan that costs nothing charges the most. The plan that costs the most charges nothing. Somewhere in between there is a monthly sales number where the whole thing flips, and neither pricing page prints it. We reviewed each one on its own terms in our Linktree review and our Beacons review. This piece puts the current numbers side by side, does the arithmetic both companies leave to you, and then asks what you are actually buying.

Linktree vs Beacons: 8 Plans and 3 Fee Rates

Every figure below comes from the two companies' own live pricing and help pages, checked on September 20, 2026. Monthly prices are what you pay billing month to month; the annual equivalent is in parentheses.

Plan	Monthly price	Seller fee on digital sales
Linktree Free	$0	12%
Linktree Starter	$8 ($6 annual)	9%
Linktree Pro	$15 ($12 annual)	9%
Linktree Premium	$35 ($30 annual)	0%
Beacons Free	$0	9%
Beacons Creator	$10 ($8.33 annual)	9%
Beacons Creator Plus	$30 ($25 annual)	0%
Beacons Creator Max	$100 ($83.30 annual)	0%

Eight plans. Two of them charge 0%. One of them charges 12%, and it is the one every creator starts on. Stripe sits underneath both platforms at 2.9% plus $0.30 per purchase, on every plan on both sides, which means processing is a wash and you can ignore it when comparing the two. Beacons also supports PayPal at 3.49% plus a fixed fee. Linktree's digital products run through your own connected Stripe account, and so do Beacons' payouts, so on both platforms the money lands in an account with your name on it.

Why Does Linktree's Free Plan Charge 12%?

Because the free plan is where Linktree prices the convenience of not deciding. Linktree takes 12% of every digital product or course sale on Free, 9% on Starter and Pro, and 0% only on Premium. The 12% rate appears nowhere on the four plan cards at the top of the pricing page. It is in the full feature comparison further down and in a help-center article. That is the number worth sitting with. A creator who signs up for free, adds a $50 guide, and sells twenty of them in a month hands Linktree $120 and pays $0 in subscription. The same twenty sales on Starter, which costs $8, cost $90 in fees, for a total of $98. Paying Linktree money makes the month cheaper.

Linktree's own worked example uses a $34.99 course. On Free you keep $29.48. On Starter or Pro you keep $30.53. On Premium you keep $33.68. The company publishes the table that makes its cheapest plan look worst, which is more honesty than most platforms manage, and it publishes it two clicks away from the page where people actually choose. One more piece of Linktree's fee structure is easy to misread. Affiliate commissions through Linktree Shops are charged on the commission you earn rather than on the order value, and Stripe takes $0.25 per payout. Premium removes Linktree's commission cut there too.

What Does Beacons Charge in 2026?

Beacons charges 9% on both the Free plan and the $10 Creator plan, and 0% on Creator Plus at $30 a month and Creator Max at $100 a month. Because Free and Creator carry the identical rate, the $10 Creator plan costs a seller exactly $10 a month more than free and changes nothing about the fee. That is the structural difference between the two companies. Linktree's first paid tier buys you a lower rate, dropping you from 12% to 9% for $8. Beacons' first paid tier buys you a custom domain, 500 email sends, and email automations, and leaves the 9% exactly where it was. Beacons is clear about this in its help center, including the detail that invoices are the one exception at 0%. Check the price on the pricing page rather than the help center. Beacons' live pricing page lists Creator Max at $100 a month, or $83.30 a month billed annually at $900 a year. Its help-center pricing article, last edited November 14, 2025, still lists Creator Max at $90 a month or $900 a year. The annual figure agrees and the monthly figure does not.

That is a $120-a-year gap between two pages owned by the same company, and it is a useful habit to take into any platform decision: the pricing page is the offer, and the help center is whatever somebody last remembered to update.

The Bill at $1,000 a Month in Sales

Here is what all eight plans cost a creator selling $1,000 of digital products in a month, counting the subscription plus the platform's seller fee and leaving Stripe out because it is identical everywhere.

Plan	Subscription	Seller fee	Monthly total
Linktree Free	$0	$120	$120
Linktree Starter	$8	$90	$98
Linktree Pro	$15	$90	$105
Linktree Premium	$35	$0	$35
Beacons Free	$0	$90	$90
Beacons Creator	$10	$90	$100
Beacons Creator Plus	$30	$0	$30
Beacons Creator Max	$100	$0	$100

The two cheapest bills belong to the two most expensive subscriptions. Beacons Creator Plus wins outright at $30, Linktree Premium is $5 behind at $35, and every other plan on the board costs two to four times as much. Notice which plans are the trap. Linktree Free at $120 and Beacons Creator at $100 are the worst two results in the table, and they are the plans a creator lands on by doing the obvious thing: signing up free, or paying the smallest amount that looks like an upgrade.

At What Sales Volume Should You Pay to Stop Paying a Fee?

Around $300 a month in sales, on either platform. On Linktree, Premium at $35 a month beats the free plan's 12% once you clear $292 a month. On Beacons, Creator Plus at $30 a month beats the free plan's 9% once you clear $333 a month. Annual billing pulls both lines down, to $250 on Linktree and $278 on Beacons. The arithmetic is one division each. Linktree's $35 is 12% of $291.67. Beacons' $30 is 9% of $333.33.

Upgrade	Monthly cost	Fee removed	Breakeven in monthly sales
Linktree Free to Starter	$8	3 points, 12% to 9%	$267
Linktree Free to Premium	$35	12 points, 12% to 0%	$292
Linktree Free to Premium, annual	$30	12 points, 12% to 0%	$250
Beacons Free to Creator Plus	$30	9 points, 9% to 0%	$333
Beacons Free to Creator Plus, annual	$25	9 points, 9% to 0%	$278

If you are a coach, a course seller, or a template maker with 50,000 engaged followers, $300 a month is roughly six sales of a $50 product. That is not a milestone you are working toward. That is a slow month. Which means the honest reading of this entire comparison is that almost everybody reading it should already be on the 0% tier of whichever platform they chose, and most people are not, because upgrading feels like spending money and the fee feels like nothing. Run your own last three months of sales through the two divisions above before you renew anything.

What Neither Fee Table Prints

Both companies are cheap. Beacons Creator Plus at $30 a month and Linktree Premium at $35 a month are close enough that the $5 should not decide anything, and we said the same about Stan Store when we priced it against this category. So the fee is settled, and the real question is what the $30 buys. It buys a page. On both platforms, the page lives on their domain unless you pay for the custom-domain feature, the checkout is theirs, the product-page template is theirs, and the person who bought your $50 guide has no reason to come back tomorrow. They downloaded a file. The transaction is complete, and your relationship with that customer ends at the receipt. Linktree reports being used by more than 70 million people. Beacons markets itself as an AI business platform with an assistant. Both descriptions are accurate and neither one changes the shape of the asset: a link page is a directory, and a directory earns once per purchase.

A link page is a hallway, not a house.

Your audience walks through it to get somewhere. What they arrive at is the business.

See What We’d Build You →

Does Either One Give You Something People Reopen Tomorrow?

No. Neither Linktree nor Beacons produces an app under your name in the App Store, and neither one gives you a product a customer uses on a schedule. Both are storefronts for one-time digital purchases, and the seller fee they compete on is a fee on a transaction that does not repeat. That is the cost missing from both fee schedules, and it is far larger than 12%. A one-time sale takes the whole customer relationship and spends it in a single evening. Somebody who followed you for two years pays $50 once, downloads a PDF, and goes back to being a follower. The 12% is annoying. The 100% you never charged again is the actual number. A product people open on a Tuesday inverts that. It renews whether or not you posted this week, it produces material for the content you owe your audience anyway, and an App Store listing means strangers can find it before they find you. We laid out the full arithmetic of that switch in why creators leave Linktree for their own app and priced what running one actually costs in the seven line items of a subscription app.

Who Each Platform Is Actually For

If you have not sold anything yet, take either free plan and pick on looks. You will pay nothing to Linktree or Beacons because 12% of $0 and 9% of $0 are the same number, and the page is genuinely close to identical. If you sell more than $300 a month in digital products, move to the 0% tier today. Beacons Creator Plus at $30 is the cheaper of the two by $5 a month, and it adds memberships, courses with video hosting, unlimited email sends, and branding removal. Linktree Premium at $35 adds social scheduling, unlimited Instagram auto-replies, and the affiliate shop at 100%. Choose on the feature you will use weekly, because the $5 will not matter by March. If you run email as a serious channel, Beacons is the stronger of the two, with unlimited sends and automations on Creator Plus against Linktree's mailing-list integrations. And if your audience pays you for a result rather than a file, neither of these is your destination. Tracking, planning, logging, scoring, and generating are software behaviors, and a link page will never be good at them, because that is not what either company is building. BUILT BY FOUNDRY builds the other version: a subscription software business in about three weeks, $0 upfront, on a revenue share. The creator owns the business and the revenue. We ship it and then we keep running it after launch, because our side only works when the product keeps earning.

Stop optimizing a 3% difference on a sale that happens once.

Your audience already proved they will pay you. Give them something worth reopening tomorrow.

See What We’d Build You →

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Beacons cheaper than Linktree in 2026?

At the 0% tier, yes, by $5 a month. Beacons Creator Plus is $30 a month and Linktree Premium is $35 a month, both with no seller fee. On the free plans Beacons is also cheaper for anyone selling, because it charges 9% where Linktree charges 12%.

Does Linktree really take 12% on the free plan?

Yes, on digital products and courses. Linktree's help-center article on transaction and processing fees lists 12% on Free, 9% on Starter and Pro, and 0% on Premium, with Stripe's 2.9% plus $0.30 on top of all four.

Does the $10 Beacons Creator plan lower my seller fee?

No. Beacons charges 9% on both the Free plan and the $10 Creator plan. Creator buys a custom domain, 500 email sends, and email automations. The fee drops to 0% only on Creator Plus at $30 a month.

How much do I need to sell before upgrading is worth it?

$292 a month on Linktree, comparing the free plan's 12% against Premium at $35 a month. $333 a month on Beacons, comparing 9% against Creator Plus at $30. Annual billing lowers those to $250 and $278.

Do Linktree and Beacons pay out to my own Stripe account?

Both connect to an account you own. Linktree creates a Stripe account for your store during setup and sends earnings there, and you are the seller of record, which means refunds, chargebacks, and taxes are yours to handle. Beacons pays direct sales into your connected Stripe or PayPal account in real time.

Can I sell a subscription through either platform?

Beacons supports memberships on Creator Plus and above. Linktree sells digital products and courses. Neither one puts a subscription app under your name in the App Store, so renewals live on their checkout and their page rather than on a product your customers keep on a home screen.