Marketing Tool Reviews

Dub review

Dub is the best modern Bitly replacement, but the attribution you probably came for starts at $90 a month

Open-source short links with click, lead and sale attribution, plus a built-in affiliate and partner program

The short answer

Dub started as an open-source link shortener and is now mostly a link attribution and partner program platform. For branded short links, QR codes and UTM hygiene, Pro at $30/month is excellent value. Tracking which links produce signups and revenue, or paying affiliates, needs Business at $90/month and a developer for an afternoon.

Pick it if

  • You want branded short links, QR codes and UTM templates for a team, with analytics that are faster and cleaner than Bitly's.
  • You run a SaaS on Stripe and want to know which links, creators or campaigns produced paying customers, not just clicks.
  • You are starting an affiliate or partner program and want link tracking, commissions and payouts in one product.
  • Open source matters to you; the core is AGPLv3 and can be self-hosted.

Skip it if

  • You only make a handful of short links a month; the free plan covers 25 new links and that may be all you need.
  • Nobody on the team can add a script and a few server-side calls; conversion tracking is not a no-code setup for most stacks.
  • You need multi-touch attribution across ads, email and organic; Dub attributes to the link that brought someone in.

What Dub is now

Dub launched in 2022 as Steven Tey's side project for sharing links and became a company in 2024. The link shortener is still there and still good: custom domains, QR codes, UTM templates, link folders, device and geo targeting, password-protected and expiring links, and a fast analytics dashboard. The code is public on GitHub under AGPLv3, with about 1% kept under a commercial license.

The bigger change is that Dub has turned into an attribution and partner platform. It added conversion tracking in January 2025 and launched Dub Partners in August 2025, and its pricing page now leads with partner plans. Dub says partner payouts through the platform have passed $20M. If you knew Dub as a shortener a couple of years ago, the product and the pricing have both moved.

Links: where it is plainly good

For link management alone, Pro at $30/month gets you 1,000 new links and 50,000 tracked clicks a month, a year of analytics history, ten custom domains, three users, folders and deep links. Paid plans include a free .link domain for the first year. That is a strong offer next to the legacy shorteners, and the API is clean enough that developers tend to like it.

The free plan is useful for testing and for very light use: 25 new links and 1,000 tracked events a month, 30 days of analytics and three custom domains. Going over the event cap does not break links. Dub keeps tracking clicks but hides the analytics until you upgrade, and does not bill overages.

Attribution: the real reason to pay

Conversion tracking starts on Business at $90/month. You add Dub's analytics script to your site, which reads a dub_id from the link and stores it as a first-party cookie, then send lead events from your signup flow and sale events from Stripe or Shopify, both of which have native integrations. After that, each link shows clicks, leads and revenue, and you can see exactly which creator, newsletter sponsor or podcast link paid off.

It is not hard, but it is developer work. Dub's docs describe server-side tracking as the more reliable route and provide SDKs for TypeScript, Python, Go, Ruby and PHP, with auth-provider guides for Clerk, Supabase, NextAuth and others. A marketer on a no-code site builder can install the script through Webflow, Framer, WordPress or Google Tag Manager, but recording leads properly usually needs someone with access to the backend.

Partners and affiliates

Business also unlocks Dub Partners: up to 500 partners, rewards per sale, lead or click, bounties, a branded program landing page, and global payouts by bank, PayPal or stablecoin. The limits are what to watch. Business caps payouts at $2,500 a month with a 5% payout fee, and the Advanced plan at $300/month raises that to $15,000 and adds the embedded referral dashboard and email campaigns. For an early program that is fine; once partners are earning real money, Advanced is the realistic tier.

What it gets right

  • Pro at $30/month is a better link shortener than most older tools at similar prices, with ten custom domains and a year of analytics.
  • Click-to-revenue attribution with native Stripe and Shopify integrations once on Business.
  • Partner program, commissions and payouts in the same product as the links, so attribution and payouts agree.
  • Open source under AGPLv3 with a self-hosting guide.
  • Links keep working and keep tracking if you exceed your event cap, and there is no overage billing.

Where it falls short

  • Conversion tracking needs Business at $90/month, three times the price of Pro.
  • Proper lead and sale tracking needs backend changes, so it is not a marketer-only setup.
  • Business caps partner payouts at $2,500 a month and charges a 5% payout fee on top.
  • The product now leans toward partner programs, so teams that only want links may find much of the interface aimed at someone else.

Dub pricing

Checked October 2026. Prices change, so confirm on Dub's pricing page before you buy.

Free option: 25 new links and 1,000 tracked events a month, 30-day analytics retention, 3 custom domains, 1 user, QR codes, UTM templates, tags and API access. Paid plans have a 14-day trial.

Free $0 25 new links/mo, 1K tracked events/mo, 30-day retention, 3 custom domains, 1 user.
Pro $30/mo 1K new links/mo, 50K tracked events/mo, 1-year retention, 10 custom domains, 3 users, folders, deep links, free .link domain.
Business $90/mo 10K new links/mo, 250K events/mo, 3-year retention, 100 domains, 10 users, conversion tracking, A/B testing, webhooks, Dub Partners with up to 500 partners and $2.5K/mo payouts at a 5% fee.
Advanced $300/mo 50K new links/mo, 1M events/mo, 5-year retention, 250 domains, 20 users, unlimited partners, $15K/mo payouts at 5%, embedded referral dashboard, email campaigns, priority support.
Enterprise Custom, annual Unlimited usage and payouts, 3% payout fee, SAML/SSO, audit logs, Slack support with SLA.

What you will actually pay

A team that wants branded links pays $30/month. A SaaS that wants revenue attribution or a small affiliate program pays $90/month plus 5% of whatever it pays partners, so $2,000 in monthly commissions adds about $100. Yearly billing takes 10% off but bills a year of usage upfront.

Your first week with Dub

If you sign up today, do these in this order.

  1. Start the 14-day trial on the plan you will actually need: Pro if you only want links, Business if you want to see signups and revenue per link.
  2. Add your branded short domain (a spare domain or a subdomain like go.yourdomain.com) and set up UTM templates so every link a teammate makes is tagged the same way.
  3. Move your live links first: bio links, QR codes on printed material, and sponsor links in newsletters and podcasts. Organise them into folders by channel.
  4. On Business, turn on conversion tracking in workspace settings and add Dub's analytics script to your site's head. Visit with ?dub_id=test and check the cookie is set.
  5. Have a developer send a lead event from your signup flow with the server SDK, and connect the Stripe or Shopify integration for sales. Run one test purchase end to end.
  6. After a week of data, compare leads and revenue per link, not clicks, and cut the channels that only produce clicks.

Gotchas to know before you commit

  • Pro does not include conversion tracking; it starts at Business, so check before buying the cheaper plan.
  • Past your tracked-events cap, analytics are hidden until you upgrade, and if usage reaches 2x the cap (4x on Free) the counter stops resetting each month.
  • If you use a CDN, purge its cache after adding the analytics script or the tracking will not load.
  • Payout fees are 5% on Business and Advanced and 3% only on Enterprise, on top of the plan price.
  • Annual billing is 10% off but charges a full year of usage upfront.

Verdict

Dub is the best choice for a startup that wants modern branded links, and the strongest reason to pay is attribution: knowing which links bring in customers, and paying the partners behind them. Buy Pro if links are all you need. Buy Business only once you have a developer ready to wire up lead and sale events, because without that you are paying three times as much for the same click counts.

4.0/5

Dub alternatives

  • BitlyPick it instead if the company already pays for it and you only need short links and QR codes, not revenue attribution.
  • Short.ioPick it instead if you want a straightforward branded shortener and have no interest in partner programs.
  • RewardfulPick it instead if you only need a Stripe affiliate program and do not care about general link management.
  • PartnerStackPick it instead if you are running a large B2B partner program with resellers and want an established marketplace of partners.

Dub questions, answered

Is Dub free?
Yes. Dub's free plan includes 25 new links and 1,000 tracked events a month, 30 days of analytics, three custom domains and one user. Paid plans start at $30 per month with a 14-day trial.
How much does Dub cost?
As of October 2026, Dub Pro is $30 per month, Business is $90, Advanced is $300 and Enterprise is custom. Yearly billing is 10% off with a year of usage billed upfront. Partner payouts carry a 5% fee on Business and Advanced.
Does Dub track conversions and revenue?
Yes, on Business and above. You install Dub's analytics script, send lead events from your signup flow and sale events through the Stripe or Shopify integration or the API, and Dub attributes them to the link that brought the customer in.
Is Dub open source?
Yes. Dub's core is open source under AGPLv3 on GitHub, with a small enterprise portion under a commercial license, and Dub publishes a self-hosting guide.
Is Dub a good Bitly alternative?
For most teams, yes. Dub Pro covers branded links, QR codes, UTM templates, ten custom domains and a year of analytics, and it adds conversion tracking and partner payouts on higher plans that Bitly is not built around.

Sources

  1. Dub pricing page
  2. Dub about page
  3. Dub on GitHub
  4. Dub blog (product launches)
  5. Dub docs: Conversion tracking quickstart
  6. Dub help: Analytics limits
  7. Dub help: Dub Partners