Custom domain costs compared

Yearly cost of the first plan with a custom domain

Each row names the cheapest published plan that lets you connect a domain, its yearly price, and how many domains that plan allows. Free-plan link quotas are included because a free domain with five links a month is a different product from a free domain with five hundred.

Yearly figures use annual billing where the vendor publishes it: Bitly Growth is $29/mo billed annually, Rebrandly Essentials $11/mo billed annually, Switchy Team $39/mo billed annually. TinyURL and T.LY figures come from third-party listings because their pricing pages block automated reads. Checked 8 November 2026.

The five that charge nothing

ReSlug, Short.io, Dub, Cuttly and Linkly all connect a domain on the free plan. They differ in what comes with it. ReSlug pairs its free domain with 500 active links, 30 days of analytics and QR codes. Short.io pairs five domains with 1,000 lifetime links and an API. Dub pairs three domains with 25 links a month and an API. Cuttly and Linkly pair one domain with 30 and 100 links a month respectively, and Linkly pauses links after 500 clicks a month.

So "free" ranges from a complete small-business setup to a trial that forces an upgrade quickly. Match the link quota to your volume before choosing on domain count alone.

The middle: $60 to $132 a year

T.LY has no free plan, but its Hobby tier at $5 a month includes one domain and 500 links, which makes it the cheapest paid route to a branded domain. TinyURL Pro, at roughly $9.99 a month according to third-party listings, allows up to three branded domains and 500 active links. Rebrandly Essentials at $11 a month billed annually allows two domains and 250 links a month. All three are reasonable if you have already decided to pay; none beats the free tiers above on domains or links.

The outliers: Switchy and Bitly

Switchy's Team plan, $39 a month billed annually, includes two domains and unlimited links, but the product is built around retargeting pixels and priced by clicks. You are paying for the pixels, not the domain.

Bitly's Growth plan is $29 a month and is billed annually only, so the cost of the first custom domain is $348 in one payment. Growth includes 500 links a month and 120 days of analytics. That is fewer links than ReSlug's free plan and a shorter analytics window than ReSlug Pro at $79 a year. Bitly's case rests on brand recognition and its enterprise tier, not on this line item.

Adding the domain registration

None of these prices include the domain itself. A subdomain of a domain you own adds nothing. A dedicated short domain adds its renewal, typically in the range of ten to forty dollars a year for common TLDs, more for very short or premium names. For a small business the realistic all-in cost of a branded short domain is therefore between zero and about forty dollars a year on the free tiers, and between about $100 and $390 a year on the paid-only tools.