Bit.ly vs cutty.dev — an honest comparison

Bit.ly is a URL shortener that everyone knows — and that is its greatest strength. But "everyone knows it" is not the same as "it is the best for you." Below is an honest comparison with cutty.dev, including where bit.ly still wins.

In short

• bit.ly — a recognizable brand, many integrations, extensive enterprise plans. The free plan is heavily limited (a dozen or so links per month), and full functionality costs from several dozen dollars per month. Servers in the USA.
• cutty.dev — everything for free without a limit on the number of links, server in the European Union, no added ads or trackers, suffixes that never return to the pool. A smaller, single-person project — no sales department, but also no pressure to "upgrade your plan".

Price

The free bit.ly plan gives you a handful of links per month and basic statistics; once the limit is exceeded or for features such as custom domains or deeper analytics, you pay a subscription.

In cutty.dev everything is free: unlimited number of links, QR codes, custom domains, statistics, passwords for links, expiration dates. Paid add-ons may appear in the future, but the standard remains free — without adding ads to your links on the "free version".

What the cutter knows about you

This is a often overlooked topic. Free tools make money somewhere — and sometimes you pay with your data.

	bit.ly	cutty.dev
Server location	USA	European Union
Visitors' IP addresses	collected	only encrypted hash
Selling / sharing statistics	part of the model	we do not do this
Third-party trackers on the site	yes	only our own, first-party

If you run a business in the EU and the topic of GDPR matters to you, hosting in Europe and the absence of data transfers to third countries simplifies the matter. We wrote about this separately.

Durability of tips

It is a difference that is not visible at first glance, but it can hurt. In many shorteners, after removing a link or an account, the suffix returns to the pool — and someone else can take it. Your old bit.ly/promocja from a printed flyer might lead somewhere completely different after some time.

At cutty.dev the slug never returns to circulation. Once created, it remains permanently reserved, even after the link is deleted. This matters everywhere a link lives for a long time: a QR code on packaging, a poster, an SMS in a customer's archive, or a backlink building SEO.

Link length and appearance

Both shorteners provide a short address. In cutty.dev you can assign your own, readable suffix (cutty.dev/cennik) for free — in bit.ly some customization is behind a paid plan. The QR code in cutty.dev generates automatically along with the link, without an extra step.

When will bit.ly be better

Honestly — bit.ly can be a better choice when:

• you are a large company with dozens of users and need roles, teams, and access control in one panel,
• you already have processes based on bit.ly integrations (Slack, Salesforce, marketing tools) and do not want to rewire them,
• your audit requires specific certificates or hosting in the USA,
• you need a guarantee of 24/7 support — a single-person project does not have a round-the-clock department behind it.

When cutty.dev will be better

• you are a freelancer, a creator, running a small or medium-sized brand,
• you care about privacy and hosting in the EU,
• you don't want the free plan to attach ads to your links or shut down your account after reaching a limit,
• you want your endpoints to be permanent and belong to you forever.

Simplest — check for yourself

Moving costs nothing and does not require an account: paste the link on cutty.dev and compare the result with what you know from bit.ly. Questions? hello@cutty.dev — we reply the same day.