The short answer
Linktree is a link page, Beacons is a monetization suite built around a link page, and Stan Store is a checkout built around a single offer. Compare Linktree and Beacons head to head and Beacons wins on built-in selling; put either one against Stan Store and Stan Store wins on getting someone to pay in the fewest steps, but only for one product at a time. Most confusion about linktree vs beacons vs stan store comes from treating all three as the same category of tool when they are actually solving three different jobs that happen to look similar in an Instagram bio.
Linktree vs beacons vs stan store at a glance
| Dimension | Linktree | Beacons | Stan Store |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Route clicks to many destinations | Monetize an audience through the page | Sell one product or offer directly |
| Selling built in | Light, add-on shop | Yes, shop, tips, and brand deals bundled | Yes, native checkout, the core feature |
| Analytics depth | Click counts, deeper insight paid | Basic on free, more detail paid | Sales and order focused, not general traffic |
| Design approach | Simple stacked list, theme presets | Modular blocks, storefront feel | Single scrolling offer page |
| Free plan shape | Persistent free plan | Persistent free plan | Trial period, not persistent, as of writing |
| Best for | Anyone who wants the default, recognized option | Creators selling several things at once | Anyone selling exactly one thing fast |
Linktree vs beacons
The practical difference between Linktree and Beacons is not cosmetic. It shows up once a page needs to do more than route traffic. Linktree stays deliberately simple: a list, a theme, a link at the top if you want to promote something. Beacons assumes from the start that the page is also a storefront, an email list builder, and a media kit, and gives you the blocks to build all three without leaving the one tool. If your Instagram bio only ever needs to point somewhere, that extra machinery in Beacons is overhead you will not use. If you are already selling a digital product, taking tips, or building a media kit to pitch brands, Beacons does in one login what would otherwise take three separate tools stitched together, which is a real advantage, not a marginal one.
Linktree vs stan store
This comparison is really a comparison between a hub and a storefront, and once you see it that way the decision gets easier. Linktree assumes you have several things to point people toward, links to social profiles, a website, maybe a few products, and treats each one as roughly equal. Stan Store assumes you have one specific offer, a course, a coaching call, a digital download, and strips away everything that is not directly in service of getting a visitor to pay for that one thing. Picking Linktree for a single-offer launch means fighting the tool's own layout to make one link stand out. Picking Stan Store for a general purpose bio means having a storefront page for a business that is not primarily selling anything, which looks strange to a visitor and undersells everything else you do. Neither is the better tool in the abstract; they sit at opposite ends of the same spectrum, built for opposite jobs.
Beacons vs stan store
Beacons and Stan Store are the two tools in this comparison actually built to sell something, which makes the choice between them the least obvious of the three pairings. The difference comes down to how many things you are selling and how much the rest of the page matters. Stan Store is built around a single, polished checkout flow for one offer at a time, and it shows in how little else is on the page competing for attention. Beacons is built to hold several revenue streams at once, a shop, a tip jar, sponsored links, a lead magnet, alongside the same page, which suits a creator whose income does not come from one product but from several smaller ones running in parallel. Someone launching a single cohort-based course with a hard deadline is usually better served by Stan Store's narrower focus, while a creator running an ongoing business with five different small revenue lines usually gets more out of Beacons' breadth instead.
Where a general link page still falls short for all three
None of these three tools were built primarily to answer where a click actually came from. Linktree's free analytics stop at a count. Beacons' free analytics are similarly high level, with more detail reserved for paid plans. Stan Store's reporting is built around sales and orders rather than general traffic patterns, which makes sense given what the tool is for, but it means none of the three will tell you, for free, which Instagram story or which paid placement actually produced a given visitor. That gap is worth knowing about even if you are not planning to switch tools, because it means the answer to "which post is working" has to come from somewhere else, whether that is a UTM convention you track by hand or a dedicated analytics-first link page like Raydar running alongside whichever of these three you use for the storefront itself. Detailed side by side breakdowns of Raydar against each one individually are at Raydar vs Linktree, Raydar vs Beacons, and Raydar vs Stan Store, if that gap turns out to matter for your use case.
Which one should you actually pick
Pick Linktree if you have not decided yet what the page needs to do beyond exist, or if the whole point is that everyone already knows the name. It is the lowest-friction default, and there is nothing wrong with defaulting to it. Beacons is the better pick over both of the others when selling is central to what you do and it is more than one thing: a shop plus tips plus brand deals plus an email list. That breadth is exactly what Beacons is built to hold in one place, without you juggling four separate tools. And if the entire business is currently one offer, where every extra thing on the page would only distract from the checkout, Stan Store beats both of the others; that narrowness is a feature for a single-offer launch, not a limitation. If you want a broader look at how a fourth kind of tool, one built around traffic data rather than routing or selling, fits next to any of these three, the wider link in bio tools comparison covers that ground. And a rundown of Linktree alternatives more generally is useful if none of these three specific tools ends up being the right fit.
Frequently asked questions
Can you run more than one of these at the same time?
Nothing stops you from running Stan Store for a single flagship offer while pointing a different bio link, on a different profile or platform, to a broader Beacons or Linktree page for everything else. What gets messy is running two of them behind the same single Instagram bio link, since most platforms only allow one, so in practice most people pick one primary tool per profile rather than layering all three under one link.
Does switching between them lose your click history?
Yes, in every case here. Rebuilding the visible page in a new tool takes minutes since it is just a list of links or a storefront layout, but none of these three export their click or sales history into a competitor, so whatever data Linktree, Beacons, or Stan Store collected stays with that tool when you leave it.
Which of the three is easiest to set up for a first-time creator?
Linktree, without much competition. There is less to configure, fewer decisions to make about blocks or product setup, and the free plan asks nothing beyond an account. Beacons and Stan Store both ask you to make product or offer decisions during setup, which is appropriate for what they are for, but it is more friction if you just want a working link today and have not decided what you are selling yet.
Do any of the three include a custom domain on their free or trial plan?
No. A custom domain sits behind a paid plan on all three, and Stan Store's trial does not change that pattern. A shared subdomain under each provider's own name is what the free or trial tier gives you; pointing your own domain at the page is treated as a paid, more permanent commitment across the category, not just for these three.
The view
If forced to pick one of these three with no other context, Beacons is the most defensible general answer, because it covers the widest range of what a growing creator or small business actually needs from a single page without requiring a second tool right away. But "most defensible in general" is a weak reason to choose a tool. The honest recommendation is the one this whole comparison has been building toward: match the tool to the specific job, a hub, a monetization suite, or a checkout, rather than picking whichever one wins the most head to head categories on paper. These three were never really fighting for the same job to begin with, whatever the marketing on any of their homepages might suggest.