Comparisons
Linktree vs Beacons vs Stan Store: Which Link in Bio Earns You More?
· by ExclusiveLink
Short answer: Linktree earns you the least because selling is a bolt-on, Beacons is workable at small volume until its 9% free-plan fee bites, and Stan Store earns well for coaches who fit its storefront. The real answer depends on one number: how much you sell through your bio each month. Below is the honest math, using each platform's public pricing, so you can find your own break-even point instead of taking anyone's word for it.
Linktree vs Beacons vs Stan Store at a glance
Four platforms, four philosophies. Here is how they line up on the things that decide whether your page earns.
| Linktree | Beacons | Stan Store | ExclusiveLink | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | Free to $24 | Free to about $30 | $29 to $99 | $19 to $149 |
| Transaction fees | Varies by monetization add-on | 9% on the free plan | Flat subscription instead | 0% on Pro and above, 2% on Creator |
| Selling model | Link list first, commerce bolted on | All-in-one storefront and media kit | Storefront only, coach-shaped | Gated and paid links as the core product |
| Platform branding | Shown on cheaper tiers | Shown on the free plan | Template look is recognizable | Never, on any plan |
| Analytics | Thin below the top tier | Basics, spread across many tools | Sales-focused | Per-link clicks and revenue on every plan |
Where the fees actually eat your earnings
Fee structures look abstract until you run a real month through them. Say you sell $1,500 of digital products through your bio in a month: a preset pack, a guide, a few coaching slots.
- Beacons free plan: 9% of $1,500 is $135 that month, about $1,620 a year at that pace. The plan costs nothing; the fee is the price.
- Stan Store: $29 to $99 a month flat. Predictable, but you pay it whether you sell or not, and it buys a storefront rather than a full bio page.
- Linktree: the subscription is $5 to $24 a month, but serious selling usually means wiring in an external checkout, so you stack a second tool and its fees on top.
- ExclusiveLink Pro: $49 a month with 0% platform fees, so $1,500 in sales costs $49. The $19 Creator plan carries a 2% fee, which on $1,500 is $30, so Creator and Pro cost the same at this volume. Sell more than $1,500 a month and Pro is simply cheaper.
The pattern: percentage fees punish growth, flat subscriptions punish slow months. The best structure is a flat price with no percentage, which is exactly why we built Pro that way. Full details are on the link in bio pricing page.
Branding: whose page is it, really?
Linktree's cheaper tiers carry Linktree's logo, and even paid pages tend to look like Linktree, because the templates are the product. Beacons keeps its badge on the free plan. Stan Store pages are clean but unmistakably Stan Store: the layout is the same for every coach on the platform.
That sameness costs money. A follower who taps your bio link is at the highest-intent moment you get; a page that looks like everyone else's spends that moment advertising the platform. An ExclusiveLink page carries no platform branding on any plan, and on Pro it lives on your own domain, so the URL itself is yours. If you are weighing a move, the Linktree alternative and Stan Store alternative pages walk through the switch step by step.
Analytics: can you tell what earned?
A link page without analytics is a guess. Linktree keeps meaningful analytics for its top tier; below that you mostly see totals. Beacons reports the basics across its many mini-tools. Stan Store tells you about sales, which is useful but only half the funnel.
The question that makes you money is upstream: which link, from which post, on which day, produced the sale? That is per-link click data joined to revenue, and it is the default view on every ExclusiveLink plan. You can see what that looks like in the link in bio maker, which shows the seven-day view next to the page as you build it.
So which one earns you more?
- You never sell anything: Linktree is fine. A list of links is what it was built for.
- You sell under about $200 a month: Beacons' free plan costs you under $18 a month in fees. Acceptable while you test, expensive the moment it works.
- You are a coach selling calls and courses, nothing else: Stan Store fits, if $29 to $99 a month for a storefront-only page suits you and you do not mind the template.
- You sell, or intend to, and want the page to be yours: ExclusiveLink. Gated and paid links are the core product, analytics come with every plan, branding is yours everywhere, and 0% fees on Pro means your growth is not taxed.
A link in bio is the one asset every platform lets you keep. Pick the tool by what you keep from each sale, not by the sticker price.
The fastest way to compare is to build the page itself: open the link in bio maker, type your handle, lock a link and see the whole product in a minute. If it earns you one extra sale a month, it has paid for itself.