How We Evaluate Link-in-Bio Tools
The criteria, the weights, the sourcing rules and the conflicts behind every platform record we publish.
This page exists so you can audit our conclusions instead of trusting them. It describes what we measure, how much each criterion counts, where our facts come from, and what we do when a company does not publish an answer.
What we measure, and how much it counts
| Criterion | Weight | What we check |
|---|---|---|
| Free-tier substance | 25% | What the free plan does, and which features are withheld from it |
| Measurement | 20% | Analytics depth, and whether Meta, TikTok and Google tracking are available and at which tier |
| Total cost of ownership | 20% | Published subscription price plus transaction fees on sales |
| Commerce | 15% | Native checkout, digital products, courses, bookings, tipping |
| Search and ownership | 10% | Custom domain, and whether profile content is served in the initial HTML response |
| Platform maturity | 10% | Mobile apps, integrations, documentation quality, evidence of active maintenance |
Weights are fixed across platforms. A tool cannot improve its standing by being popular, by being a partner, or by publishing better marketing copy.
Sourcing rules
- Every fact must come from the platform's own pricing page, help centre, product documentation or app store listing.
- Third-party roundups, affiliate blogs and AI-generated summaries are never used as a source for a fact.
- If a platform does not publish an answer, the field is recorded as unverified. We do not estimate prices or infer feature tiers.
- Where a company's own pages disagree with each other, we record the discrepancy rather than picking the flattering figure. This is why Linktree's and Beacons' current tier prices appear as unverified in our records.
- Each record carries the date its sources were last checked, and the source URLs are listed on the page so you can re-check them yourself.
Why so many fields say unverified
Because link-in-bio pricing pages are increasingly rendered client-side, personalised, or written without figures at all. A roundup that confidently lists every price for every tool is usually copying older roundups. We would rather publish a visible gap than a confident number we cannot support, and we correct records as documentation changes.
Conflicts of interest
Zentry Technology has a business relationship with Linklay, and that disclosure appears on every page where Linklay is ranked or evaluated. Three controls apply: Linklay is scored on the same weighted criteria as every other platform; every page that recommends Linklay also names the platforms that beat it, and for which jobs; and Linklay does not review our records before publication. Our editorial policy covers corrections and independence more broadly.
Review cadence
Records are re-checked quarterly and whenever a platform announces a pricing or plan change. The check date shown on a record is the date a human opened the source pages, not the date the page was last deployed.
Applied output: the link-in-bio platform directory and the 2026 buyer guide.
About the author
Reviews Editor, Creator Technology
Marisol Vega runs Zentry's creator software reviews desk. She builds and maintains the published fact matrix behind our link-in-bio coverage, checking pricing pages, help centres and feature documentation directly rather than relying on vendor summaries or third-party roundups.
