Onlink vs Beacons: pricing, fees, payouts and pages

Beacons pricing is four plans: Free at $0, Creator at $10 a month or $100 a year, Creator Plus at $30 a month or $300 a year, and Creator Max at $90 a month or $900 a year, per Beacons' own pricing page read on 6 September 2026; a sale costs 9% on the first two plans and 0% on the other two, per Beacons' fees article. Onlink is three plans: Free at $0 with 10% on each sale, Pro at $12.50 with 7%, and Premium at $37.50 with 0%. This guide puts the two side by side on price, on what a sale costs, on how the money reaches you, on how the buyer receives what they bought, on what each page holds and on how much of the page you can change, with every Beacons number from Beacons' pages and every Onlink number from the Onlink pricing page.

The short version: both have a free plan that sells, and the fee on it is close, 9% on Beacons and 10% on Onlink. The differences are elsewhere. On Onlink, courses with hosted video and paid calls are on the free plan; on Beacons, the free plan holds "1 course" "with no video hosting", and unlimited courses with hosting start on the $30 plan. On Onlink, a buyer keeps what they bought in a library they can open any time while the product is on your page, and for 30 days after you delete it; on Beacons, the access links in the buyer's email "are only active for 7 days after purchase", per its help centre. On Onlink the page is a grid you arrange yourself, once for the desktop and once for the phone, with a colour, gradient or pattern behind it on every plan; Beacons prints "colors, fonts, styles, and layouts" and an AI designer. And Beacons adds a custom domain, email marketing, a media kit, memberships and a website builder that Onlink does not offer.

How did we compare Onlink and Beacons?

We read Beacons' pricing page, its plans and fees articles and the help articles linked where each fact appears, in a browser on 6 September 2026, put the six questions below to both, and read Beacons' refund and cancellation pages besides. Every Beacons line is that page's own words or numbers, and every Onlink number comes from the constants the product charges on, which the Onlink pricing page prints.

• Price: each plan, monthly and billed annually, and what the free plan holds.
• Selling: what a sale costs on each plan, and where the two subscriptions meet.
• The money: which account receives a sale, where it sits, and how it reaches your bank.
• The buyer: how a purchase is delivered, and for how long it stays open.
• The page: what it holds and what you can sell on the free plan.
• Design: what the page is, and what you can change on it.

How much does Beacons cost?

Beacons costs $0 on Free, $10 a month on Creator, $30 a month on Creator Plus and $90 a month on Creator Max, per Beacons' pricing page read on 6 September 2026; billed annually the paid plans are $100, $300 and $900 a year, which the page prints as $8.33, $25 and $75 a month. Onlink's three plans, from the Onlink pricing page, are Free at $0, Pro at $12.50 a month or $10 a month billed annually ($120 a year), and Premium at $37.50 a month or $30 a month billed annually ($360 a year).

Sources, each read on 6 September 2026: Onlink pricing, Beacons' pricing page, Beacons' plans article, Beacons' transaction fees article and the Beacons help articles linked where each fact appears. Beacons' plans article adds one detail to the 9%: on Creator the seller fees "Apply to all sales (except invoices, which are 0%)". Onlink's 10%, 7% and 0% are platform fees, and Stripe's processing fee is charged by Stripe on top, on every plan; Beacons' store fees article draws the same line, "a Beacons Store fee, and payment processor transaction fee".

Is Beacons free?

Yes: Beacons' pricing page prints a Free plan at $0 "Free forever", and the plans article lists what it holds: unlimited links, a media kit, the store with a 9% transaction fee, 50 email sends a month, page customisation and 5 link in bio pages. Onlink's free plan is also $0 with no card and no time limit, sells at 10%, and holds the whole page: unlimited links, photos and videos, Spotify and YouTube cards, an Instagram card of your posts or reels, notes and a map, plus digital products, courses, paid calls (bookings), donations and tips, with 10 GB of media.

The Beacons lines are from its pricing page and plans article, each read on 6 September 2026. We built Onlink's free plan to hold almost the whole product on purpose: the part a creator needs to get paid should not sit behind a subscription, so on Onlink the page, every card type and every kind of selling are on Free, and the subscription is for a lower fee and more tools, not for permission to sell a course or take a paid call.

What does a sale cost on Onlink and on Beacons?

On Beacons a sale costs 9% on Free and Creator and 0% on Creator Plus and Creator Max, plus the processor's fee; on Onlink it costs 10% on Free, 7% on Pro and 0% on Premium, plus Stripe's fee. On a $20 sale the free plans keep $18.20 on Beacons and $18.00 on Onlink, before the processor's fee, and the table takes each plan in turn.

Which costs less depends on how much you sell in a month. Beacons Creator Plus at $30 a month costs the same as Onlink's 10% fee on $300 of sales, and as Beacons' own 9% fee on $333.33; billed annually, its $25 a month equals the Onlink fee on $250 and the Beacons fee on $277.78. Below each platform's figure its free plan costs less than the subscription; above it a 0% plan costs less than the fee, and there the choice is Beacons Creator Plus at $25 a month billed annually against Onlink Premium at $30, a difference of $5 a month with the fee at zero on both.

• You sell nothing this month: both free plans cost $0; Beacons Creator costs $10; Onlink Pro costs $12.50.
• You sell $100: Beacons Free costs $9; Onlink Free costs $10; Beacons Creator costs $10 plus $9; Onlink Pro costs $12.50 plus $7.
• You sell $300: Onlink Free and Beacons Creator Plus monthly both cost $30.
• You sell $1,000: Beacons Free costs $90; Onlink Free costs $100; Beacons Creator Plus costs $30; Onlink Premium costs $37.50, or $30 on annual billing.

The processor's fee is left out of every line because it is charged by Stripe or PayPal on both. On Beacons the Creator plan does not lower the fee: Creator at $10 keeps the 9%, and what it adds is a custom domain, email automations, 500 email sends a month and AI brand outreach, per the plans article. On Onlink each paid plan lowers the fee, and nothing is charged until a sale happens, so the arithmetic says to start on Free and move to Premium once your monthly sales pass the figure above.

Where does the money go, and how do you get paid?

On both, a sale is paid into a Stripe account that is yours, and on Beacons it can be PayPal instead. Onlink pays each sale into your own Stripe account through Stripe Connect, and Stripe pays it out to your bank on its standard schedule; Beacons' help centre, read on 6 September 2026, says that for direct sales "the proceeds are immediately available in your connected Stripe or PayPal account", per its payouts article.

The Beacons quotes are from its Stripe set-up post, its payout timing article, its payouts article and its payments set-up article, each read on 6 September 2026. On sales the two work the same way, and that is the point: on both, the money goes to the processor's account in your name, not to the platform. The difference is the second rail. Beacons also takes PayPal, and its bank-account option is "used for informational purposes only" and pays out through PayPal "every 7-14 days" for invoices, per the set-up article; Onlink is Stripe only, and the affiliate programme pays into the same Stripe account.

How does the buyer receive what they bought?

On Onlink the buyer gets an access link on the confirmation screen and by email, and keeps the purchase in a library at app.on.link they can open any time while the product is on your page. On Beacons the buyer downloads from a success screen or from a link in the confirmation email, and Beacons' help centre says "Links to access/view content are only active for 7 days after purchase", per its buyer access article read on 6 September 2026.

The Beacons line is from the same buyer access article. On Onlink there is nothing for the seller to resend: the buyer can have the access email sent again from the confirmation screen, the library keeps their downloads and courses from every Onlink seller under Downloads, Courses and Bookings, and if you delete a product later they keep access for 30 days with a countdown before it is removed. We built it that way because a file bought once should stay bought; the seller should not be the buyer's backup.

What does each page hold?

Onlink's page is a bento grid of cards you place yourself: photos, videos, links, notes, a map, Spotify and YouTube cards, an Instagram card of your posts or reels, and the paid cards for digital products, courses, paid calls, donations and tips, all on the free plan. Beacons' page is a link in bio with blocks, plus a store, a media kit, email marketing, an Instagram auto-DM tool, affiliate links and a website builder, with the bigger pieces on the paid plans, per its pricing page read on 6 September 2026.

The Beacons lines are from its pricing page, plans article, custom domain post and website FAQ, each read on 6 September 2026. Onlink does not offer a custom domain, email marketing, a media kit, memberships, order bumps, buy-now-pay-later, a website builder or physical products; if those are on your list, Beacons prints them, most at $10 and $30 a month, and its help centre has a "How to Sell Physical Products" article. What Onlink puts on the free plan that Beacons' pages place higher up is the selling itself: courses with hosted video and paid calls with a Google Meet link, next to the photos and video that sell them.

How much of the page can you change?

On Onlink, almost all of it, and on every plan: the page is a grid of cards you drag into place, laid out once for the desktop and once for the phone, with the background as a colour, a gradient or a pattern on Free and as a photo or a video on Pro and Premium. Beacons' pricing page, read on 6 September 2026, prints "Unlimited Link in Bio Customization" with "colors, fonts, styles, and layouts", "Custom or Stock Background Images & Videos" and an "AI Link in Bio Designer"; the table takes each part of the page in turn.

The Beacons lines are from its pricing page and plans article, each read on 6 September 2026. The difference a creator feels is in the editing rather than in the list of options. On Onlink you drag a card anywhere on the grid and the rest of the page settles around it, you make a card bigger or smaller by choosing its size, and the phone layout is a second grid you arrange the same way, so the page looks the way you set it on both screens rather than the way a theme stacks it. Beacons' pages describe a page built from blocks, with a theme picked or generated, and a sub-page for each purpose; a Beacons page can also be a website with several pages, which an Onlink page is not.

Is Beacons legit?

Beacons is a real company, Beacons AI Inc., with a published help centre and a refund page, both read on 6 September 2026; we compare its pages, not its reviews. What those pages say is worth knowing before you pay for a plan.

• Refunds on the subscription: Beacons' refund page says "all paid subscription fees are non-refundable, except when required by law", and adds that in some situations "we are willing to offer you a pro-rated refund" on request by email.
• Cancelling: from Account Settings, then Billing, then Manage and Cancel; the page notes that "this must be done via desktop/computer rather than mobile device", and that "canceling your subscription may alter your page appearance and functionality, due to the loss of premium features".
• Fees on the page: the fees article answers the question "Why did I get 9% taken out of my first sale even though I paid for Beacons pro?" with the plan table, because the $10 plan keeps the 9%.
• On Onlink the equivalent facts are shorter: there is no subscription to refund on Free, a paid plan is cancelled from the billing page you reach from the dashboard and runs to the end of its period, and your page and content remain yours.

The pages, each read on 6 September 2026: Beacons' refund page, Beacons' cancellation page and Beacons' fees article.

What matters more than price?

Between two free plans whose fees are a point apart, what matters more than the price is what the free plan lets you sell before you pay, and whether the buyer keeps what they bought. Of the two, the lowest risk is the plan that sells the course and the paid call at $0 and keeps the purchase open, because those are the two lines a creator cannot buy back later with a lower fee.

On a $20 file the free plans keep $18.20 on Beacons and $18.00 on Onlink, twenty cents in Beacons' favour; on a course with video or a paid call, Beacons' free plan prints "1 course" "with no video hosting" and hosted courses under Creator Plus at $30 a month, while Onlink's free plan sells both. The buyer's link on Beacons is "only active for 7 days after purchase"; on Onlink the library stays open while the product is on your page and for 30 days after you delete it. Past $300 of monthly sales, the two 0% plans are $5 a month apart on annual billing, $25 against $30, so at volume the price is close and the other two lines still decide.

Onlink or Beacons: which should you pick?

It depends on what you sell and what your buyers keep, and the table takes it case by case. For a course with video or a paid call before you pay, for a purchase that stays open, and for a page you arrange yourself on both screens, the answer is Onlink; for a custom domain, email marketing, a media kit, memberships, a website builder or physical products it is Beacons, from $10 a month.

Per the pages linked under the tables above, read on 6 September 2026. The same cases, with the reason behind each pick:

• You want to sell a course with video or a paid call without a subscription: Onlink Free; on Beacons the free plan holds one course with no video hosting, and hosted courses are printed under Creator Plus at $30 a month.
• You want the buyer to keep the purchase: Onlink's library, open while the product is on your page and for 30 days after you delete it; Beacons' access links last 7 days, per its help centre.
• You want to arrange the page yourself, once for the desktop and once for the phone, with photos, video and Spotify cards on the grid next to the paid cards and no platform badge on any plan: Onlink; Beacons prints "colors, fonts, styles, and layouts" and removes its logo on Creator Plus.
• You sell files only, on a free plan: the fee is 9% on Beacons and 10% on Onlink, so a $20 sale keeps $18.20 there and $18.00 here, before the processor's fee.
• You sell more than $300 a month and want 0%: Onlink Premium at $30 a month billed annually, or Beacons Creator Plus at $25; $5 a month apart, with the fee at zero on both.
• You want a custom domain, email marketing, a media kit, memberships, a website builder or physical products: Beacons, from $10 a month; Onlink does not offer them.

Every Beacons number in this list comes from the pages linked above, read on 6 September 2026; if Beacons changes a price, its pricing page is the place to check. Onlink's are on the Onlink pricing page. Linktree against both is in our comparison of Linktree alternatives, and Stan Store, which has no free plan, is in Onlink vs Stan Store.

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