A free promo-code page: what free actually includes, and what it costs

Five questions to ask a free plan

Free plans are designed to be evaluated on the day you sign up, when all of them look fine. Ask these instead, which are the questions you meet in month two.

1. Is it a plan or a clock? A 14-day trial is a paid product with a delay. That is not a criticism of the product, it just means the price is the price.
2. What happens to your history? Retention windows are the most common free-tier limit and the last one you notice, because it only hurts the day someone asks about a campaign that has scrolled out of the window.
3. What comes out of your earnings? A page can be free while the platform takes a cut of commissions or sales routed through it. That is the real price, and it scales with your success rather than sitting still at zero.
4. Whose name is on your page? Some free tiers carry a platform banner. Whether that matters is a brand question, not a technical one.
5. What is the cheapest step off it? If you will predictably outgrow the free tier, the number that matters is the next tier's price, not the free one.

The free tiers, side by side

• Linktree

  Free plan today

  Yes, $0/mo

  History on free

  Insights limited to the last 28 days

  What free takes

  12% on digital products and courses sold through Linktree, and a percentage of commission earned on Shops, Sponsored Links and Affiliate Opportunities

  Cheapest step up

  Starter, $6/mo billed annually

• Beacons

  Free plan today

  Yes, $0/mo, free forever

  History on free

  No retention window published

  What free takes

  9% transaction fee on store sales and on affiliate-link commissions from its brand network

  Cheapest step up

  Creator, $10/mo or $8.33 billed annually

• Campsite.bio

  Free plan today

  Yes, free forever

  History on free

  Last 14 days plus lifetime totals

  What free takes

  0% transaction fees on all plans, stated as for a limited time; Campsite branding stays on the free page

  Cheapest step up

  Pro, $7/mo

• Later Link in Bio

  Free plan today

  Ambiguous: the pricing page lists paid plans and a 14-day trial only, the help center still documents a Free column

  History on free

  3 months of click data on the documented Free column

  What free takes

  A Later branded banner on the free page

  Cheapest step up

  Starter, $18.75/mo billed yearly

• Stan Store

  Free plan today

  No, 14-day trial only

  History on free

  Not applicable

  What free takes

  Nothing from sales; Stan charges no transaction fee

  Cheapest step up

  Creator, $29/mo or $300/yr

• usecode.sh

  Free plan today

  Yes, and it is the whole product

  History on free

  Full history

  What free takes

  Nothing; there is no checkout and no catalog to take a percentage of

  Cheapest step up

  There is no paid tier

Read the fourth column against your own numbers before the first. A 9% cut of affiliate commission costs nothing at zero commission and costs more than any subscription here once commission is real, which is exactly the point at which you can afford the subscription that removes it. That is not a trap, it is a deliberate design, and both Beacons and Linktree publish it plainly.

When each free tier is the right one to take

• Beacons if you want the most tool for nothing. Its free plan names a daily-updating media kit and 50 email sends a month; rate card, invoicing and past projects appear in its comparison table as icons with no tier stated, so treat those as unconfirmed on free. Even on the published items nothing else here gives away that much brand-deal machinery, and if you are not yet earning commission the 9% costs you nothing.
• Linktree if you want the code app and the recognised address, and your first question about last quarter will not arrive within 28 days. It is also the only free tier here with a purpose-built way to display a code that belongs to another brand.
• Campsite.bio if the page needs opt-in forms or scheduled links and you would rather pay $7 than $10 or more when you outgrow free. Embeds are on its free plan, so they are not a reason to upgrade. Note that its free tier gates several of the richer link types, so the free plan is closer to a preview than to Beacons' free plan.
• usecode.sh if codes are the page's job, you want copies counted alongside views and taps, and you do not want a retention window at all. The trade is scope: no store, no email, no domain, no scheduler.
• Stan Store, paid, if you sell your own products. Comparing its $29 against a free page is a category error: you are buying a checkout, and if a checkout is how you earn, free pages are not competing for that money.
• Later, paid, if you already schedule there. The bundled page costs nothing extra on a plan you were buying anyway, which is a better deal than any free tier if the scheduler is already in your budget.

When free is the more expensive choice

• You sell digital products through the page. On Linktree's free plan the fee on digital products and courses is 12%, against 9% on Starter and Pro and 0% on Premium. Selling anything regularly makes the subscription cheaper than the free plan.
• You earn real commission through a platform's own catalog. Beacons charges 9% on affiliate-link commissions on Free and Creator, and 0% on Creator Plus. There is a crossover point, and it is arithmetic, not opinion.
• You need last quarter's numbers. A 28-day or 14-day window makes the answer unavailable at any price after the fact, because the data is not retained and cannot be bought back.

Why the page itself stays free here

usecode.sh keeps the code page free because the business is designed around optional brand programs, never around the page or the links a creator brings. That commitment is structural: imported links are stored in a way that cannot have a fee attached. If you only ever use the free page, you never pay anything. It is also the reason the fourth column above reads as it does, rather than as a number waiting to be introduced later.

Limits of this comparison

• Later's free tier is reported as ambiguous because its two official pages disagree on the verification date: the pricing page markets Starter, Growth and Scale with a 14-day trial and no free plan, while the Link in Bio features-by-plan help article still lists a Free column. Check with Later before choosing on that basis.
• Beacons publishes fee tiers but no analytics retention window, so its history cell says unpublished rather than unlimited. Absence of a published limit is not a promise of no limit.
• Campsite's 0% transaction fee is published with the qualifier that it applies for a limited time, quoted here as stated.
• Linktree's Shops and Sponsored Links are documented as available to creators in the United States, with eligibility depending on location and content, so the commission mechanics above will not apply to every reader.
• No tool on this page can see whether a code was redeemed. Free or paid, what any of them can show you is interest: views, clicks, and in one case copies. Prices are the US-dollar figures published on the verification date. All names are trademarks of their owners; this is an independent comparison and the sources below are the authority.