Bitly costs $29/mo — and unlike a tool you buy once, that bill never stops. Over three years that's roughly $1,044 for software doing a job your own hardware could just as easily do.
Where the subscription actually goes
$29/mo ($348/yr) for a custom domain is the sticker price. It compounds: cancel and you typically lose access to your own history, and most plans ratchet the price up as you add usage, seats or storage — the bill rarely stays flat for long.
Trimly: the pay-once alternative
Trimly does the same core job for $29, once. Branded short links, QR codes and click analytics — on your domain, in your SQLite file.
| Trimly | Bitly | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $29 once | $29/mo ($348/yr) for a custom domain |
| Your own domain | Included | Paid plans only |
| Links | Unlimited | Capped per plan |
| Click data ownership | Your SQLite file | Their servers |
| QR codes (PNG + SVG) | Included | Limited / paid tiers |
| Bulk CSV import/export | Yes | Paid tiers |
| Tracking pixels / telemetry | None | Their business model |
One month of Bitly's custom-domain plan costs the same as Trimly does once.
Is the subscription ever still worth it?
If you need Bitly's specific ecosystem, integrations or managed infrastructure and that's genuinely load-bearing for you, the subscription earns its keep — that's a real trade-off, not a trick. Trimly is for everyone else: people paying every month for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
Try Trimly — $29, once
Branded short links, QR codes and click analytics — on your domain, in your SQLite file.