> Content index: https://devbio.me/blogs/llms.txt
> Canonical page: https://devbio.me/blogs/beacons-pricing-tiers
---
title: Beacons Pricing: What the 9% Seller Fee Costs
description: Beacons pricing runs $0 to $90/mo, but the 9% seller fee on Free and Creator is the real cost. See the tiers, the fee cliff, and break-even math.
keywords: beacons pricing, beacons ai pricing, beacons transaction fee, beacons creator plus, beacons free plan
published: 2026-09-06
updated: 2026-09-11
url: https://devbio.me/blogs/beacons-pricing-tiers
word_count: 2104
---
# Beacons Pricing: What the 9% Seller Fee Costs
> Beacons pricing runs $0 to $90/mo, but the 9% seller fee on Free and Creator is the real cost. See the tiers, the fee cliff, and break-even math.
Canonical: https://devbio.me/blogs/beacons-pricing-tiers
Published: 2026-09-06
## Related Pages
- [Custom Domain Developer Bio: What the CNAME Doesn't Change](https://devbio.me/blogs/custom-domain-developer-bio)
- [Beacons Alternative for Developers in 2026 (No 9% Cut)](https://devbio.me/blogs/beacons-alternative-developers)
- [Linktree Pricing: What Each Tier Actually Unlocks](https://devbio.me/blogs/linktree-pricing-tiers)
- [Carrd Pricing: The $9 Tier Still Has No Custom Domain](https://devbio.me/blogs/carrd-pricing-2026)
- [Linktree vs Beacons: Which Fee Model Costs Less](https://devbio.me/blogs/linktree-vs-beacons)
- [Stan Store Pricing: What $29 and $99 Really Cost](https://devbio.me/blogs/stan-store-pricing)
- [The Best Link in Bio for Developers in 2026](https://devbio.me/blogs/link-in-bio-for-developers)
- [Linktree Alternatives: 8 Tools Compared for 2026](https://devbio.me/blogs/linktree-alternatives-compared)
*Photo by [rupixen](https://unsplash.com/@rupixen?utm_source=quillly&utm_medium=referral) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com?utm_source=quillly&utm_medium=referral)*
You sold $800 of a side-project template last month on the Beacons free plan. Beacons kept $72 of it. The plan you picked because it cost nothing turned out to be the most expensive one on the menu, and nothing on the pricing page warned you. That is the trap in every link-in-bio pricing table that mixes subscriptions with revenue shares: the sticker price and the actual cost move in opposite directions.
**Beacons pricing has four tiers: Free at $0, Creator at $10/month, Creator Plus at $30/month, and Creator Max at $90/month. The number that actually decides your bill is the 9% seller fee, which applies on both Free and Creator. Only Creator Plus and above drop it to 0%.** That single line is the whole pricing page.
- [Beacons pricing at a glance](#beacons-pricing-at-a-glance)
- [The 9% seller fee is the price tag that matters](#the-9-seller-fee-is-the-price-tag-that-matters)
- [What the Beacons free plan actually includes](#what-the-beacons-free-plan-actually-includes)
- [Creator at $10/month: you're mostly buying a domain](#creator-at-10month-youre-mostly-buying-a-domain)
- [Creator Plus at $30/month: where the fee cliff ends](#creator-plus-at-30month-where-the-fee-cliff-ends)
- [Creator Max at $90/month: services, not software](#creator-max-at-90month-services-not-software)
- [Break-even math: the sales number that picks your tier](#break-even-math-the-sales-number-that-picks-your-tier)
- [Beacons vs Linktree, Carrd, and a developer bio](#beacons-vs-linktree-carrd-and-a-developer-bio)
- [Frequently asked questions](#frequently-asked-questions)
## Beacons Pricing at a Glance
Here is every tier, with the fee column that most comparison posts leave out.
| Tier | Monthly | Annual | Seller fee | The one thing it unlocks |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Free | $0 | $0 | 9% | Unlimited links, media kit, 50 email sends/mo |
| Creator | $10 | $100 ($8.33/mo) | 9% | Custom domain, free for the first year |
| Creator Plus | $30 | $300 ($25/mo) | **0%** | No seller fee, courses, memberships, logo removal |
| Creator Max | $90 | $900 ($75/mo) | 0% | Google Workspace, NFC card, white-glove onboarding |
Annual billing saves roughly 17% on every paid tier. We checked every number above in September 2026 against two sources that agree on all four tiers: the [Beacons pricing page](https://beacons.ai/i/pricing) and its [help-center pricing article](https://help.beacons.ai/en/articles/4695681). Pricing pages move, so re-check before you commit to an annual plan.
Two things jump out. The jump from Free to Creator costs $10 and does not touch your fee. The jump from Creator to Creator Plus costs $20 more and erases it entirely.
## The 9% Seller Fee Is the Price Tag That Matters
The Beacons transaction fee is 9% of sales on both the free plan and Creator. It applies to what you sell through Beacons — digital products, courses, memberships, tips — not to your subscription.
That structure inverts the usual read on a pricing page. On most SaaS, the cheapest tier is the cheapest. Here, the cheapest tier is a revenue share, and revenue shares scale with your success while a subscription does not.
Read the crossings, not the curves. Free stops being the cheap option the moment you clear a few hundred dollars a month in sales. Creator never becomes the cheapest tier at any sales volume — it sits $10 above Free forever and never buys the fee back.
If you sell nothing through the platform, the fee is irrelevant and Free is genuinely free. That is the case for most developers using a link-in-bio page purely as a profile hub, which is worth knowing before you talk yourself into a paid plan.
## What the Beacons Free Plan Actually Includes
The Beacons free plan is more generous than most link-in-bio free tiers. It ships:
- Unlimited links and a customizable link-in-bio page
- A media kit that updates daily
- Unlimited digital products and affiliate links
- 50 email sends per month
- Instagram auto-DM and real-time analytics
- 30 daily AI credits
What it does not ship is a custom domain, and it keeps the 9% cut. For a developer whose page links to GitHub, a résumé, and three side projects, the missing custom domain is usually the only real gap — and there are [cheaper ways to put a bio on your own domain](https://devbio.me/blogs/custom-domain-developer-bio) than a $10/month creator suite.
The AI credits are worth calling out because they are the free tier's main upsell lever. Thirty a day sounds generous until you use the writing tools regularly; the ladder to 300/day is the $10 tier and unlimited is the $30 tier.
If the storefront is the part you will never touch, [start with a free developer bio instead](https://devbio.me) and skip the fee question altogether.
## Creator at $10/Month: You're Mostly Buying a Domain
Creator adds a custom domain, 500 email sends per month, 300 daily AI credits, and advanced SEO and marketing features. It keeps the 9% seller fee.
The help center notes the custom domain is "free for your first year." That is a renewal cost landing in month 13 that the pricing page does not price for you — budget for standard domain registration after the first year, on top of the $10/month.
So the honest framing of Creator: it is a features tier, not an economics tier. If you are paying $10/month hoping to keep more of your sales, you picked the wrong upgrade.
## Creator Plus at $30/Month: Where the Fee Cliff Ends
Creator Plus is the tier the whole ladder is built to sell. It drops the seller fee to 0% and adds unlimited AI credits, unlimited email sends, unlimited courses with video hosting, unlimited memberships, Buy Now Pay Later checkout options, 100% affiliate commissions, and removal of the Beacons logo.
For anyone actually selling, this is the only tier whose price is bounded. Above it, your cost stops tracking your revenue — which is the entire point of paying for software instead of renting a percentage of your business.
The Beacons Creator Plus decision is therefore not "do I want courses?" It is "do I sell more than a few hundred dollars a month?" If yes, you are already paying more than $30 in fees.
[Compare that ladder against a flat developer bio →](https://devbio.me/blogs/beacons-alternative-developers)
## Creator Max at $90/Month: Services, Not Software
Creator Max adds Google Workspace, white-glove onboarding, prioritized support, a physical NFC card, and VIP event access on top of everything in Creator Plus.
Notice that none of those are product features. The software is identical to Creator Plus; you are buying humans, an email suite, and a piece of plastic. That is a legitimate purchase for a full-time creator running a team, and a poor one for a developer with a side project.
## Break-Even Math: The Sales Number That Picks Your Tier
The fee makes tier selection a single arithmetic problem. Set the two total costs equal and solve for monthly sales:
- Free vs Creator Plus: 9% of sales = \$30, so they cost the same at \*\*\$333/month\*\* in sales.
- **Creator vs Creator Plus:** $10 + 9% of sales = $30, so they break even at **$222/month** in sales.
- On annual billing, Creator Plus drops to \$25/month, pulling those numbers down to \*\*\$278 and \$185\*\*.
Under $222/month in sales, stay on Free and skip Creator entirely. Over it, go straight to Creator Plus. Creator is the tier you buy only when you want a custom domain and genuinely do not sell anything — a narrow enough case that it is worth double-checking against your last three months of payouts.
One caveat worth stating plainly: this math covers the Beacons seller fee alone. Whatever your payment processor charges to move the money is a separate line item on every platform, including this one, so compare fees like for like when you shop around.
## Beacons vs Linktree, Carrd, and a Developer Bio
Beacons AI pricing sits at the expensive end of the link-in-bio market because it is not really a link-in-bio product — it is a creator commerce suite with a link page attached.
| Platform | Entry paid tier | Takes a cut of sales? |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Beacons | $10/mo (Creator) | Yes, 9% until $30/mo |
| Linktree | Region-localized tiers | Commerce features are tier-gated |
| Carrd | $9/year (Pro Lite) | No — it is a static site builder |
| DevBio | $12/year (Pro) | No — it does not process your sales |
If you are a developer, the commerce machinery is usually the part you do not need. Our breakdowns of [Linktree's pricing tiers](https://devbio.me/blogs/linktree-pricing-tiers) and [Carrd's pricing](https://devbio.me/blogs/carrd-pricing-2026) show the same pattern: you are paying for a creator storefront and using 10% of it.
Beacons and Linktree are also the two most often weighed against each other directly, and they charge in genuinely different currencies — a percentage of sales versus a regional subscription. We put the two fee models side by side in [Linktree vs Beacons](https://devbio.me/blogs/linktree-vs-beacons), including the break-even point where each one stops being the cheaper choice.
The same arithmetic decides between Beacons and a flat-subscription storefront. Stan Store charges no seller fee at all but starts at $29/month, so it only beats the 9% cut once you clear roughly $322 in monthly sales — our [Stan Store pricing breakdown](https://devbio.me/blogs/stan-store-pricing) runs that math alongside the processor fees both platforms leave you to pay.
For comparison, DevBio's own plans are set in the codebase rather than negotiated per region: Free is $0 and includes a public bio at devbio.me/{you}, every bio component, GitHub public-repo metadata, a LaTeX PDF résumé, and a custom theme. Pro is $2/month or $12/year with a 7-day trial, adding a custom domain, branding removal, full analytics with 30-day history, GitHub private repos plus the contribution heatmap, and hourly revenue sync instead of every six hours. There is no seller fee at any tier because DevBio does not process your sales — it links to what you have already built.
That is a different product category, not a cheaper Beacons. If you run courses and memberships, Creator Plus is the right tool. If you want [one link that proves what you have shipped](https://devbio.me/blogs/link-in-bio-for-developers), a commerce suite is overhead.
> **Sizing up a link-in-bio for a developer profile?**
> DevBio is free to start, adds no cut on anything you sell elsewhere, and pulls live GitHub and revenue data into a single page at devbio.me/{you}.
> → [See what a developer bio looks like](https://devbio.me)
## Frequently Asked Questions
### Does Beacons really take 9% of sales?
Yes, on the Free and Creator tiers. Beacons lists a 9% seller fee on both, applied to sales you make through the platform such as digital products, courses, and memberships. Creator Plus at $30/month and Creator Max at $90/month drop it to 0%.
### Is the Beacons free plan actually free?
It is free to use, with no subscription charge. But if you sell through it, the 9% fee means you pay Beacons proportionally to your revenue. At $333/month in sales you have paid more than a $30 Creator Plus subscription would have cost.
### How much does Beacons cost per year?
Annual billing runs $100 for Creator, $300 for Creator Plus, and $900 for Creator Max — roughly a 17% discount against monthly. Free stays $0. The seller fee is unchanged by billing frequency.
### Which Beacons tier should I pick?
If you sell nothing through Beacons, Free. If you sell under about $222/month, still Free — the fee costs less than upgrading. Above that, Creator Plus, because 0% fees pay for the $30 subscription outright. Creator Max only makes sense for teams.
### Is there a cheaper alternative for developers?
Depends what you need. If you want a profile page rather than a storefront, static builders like Carrd and developer-focused bio pages cost a fraction of a creator suite and take no cut. If you genuinely sell courses and memberships, the Beacons feature set is hard to replace at that price.
### Does the Creator custom domain stay free?
The help center describes it as free for your first year. After that, plan for standard domain registration costs on top of your subscription — a small amount, but one the pricing page does not show you.
## Key Takeaways
- Beacons pricing is four tiers — $0, $10, $30, and $90 per month — but the 9% seller fee on Free and Creator is what determines your real bill.
- Creator at $10/month does not reduce the fee. It is a features upgrade, not an economics one.
- Creator Plus at $30/month is the first tier with 0% seller fees, and it pays for itself at roughly $222/month in sales.
- If you never sell through the platform, the free plan is genuinely free and the fee never fires.
- Developers who want a profile rather than a storefront are paying for machinery they will not use — [a purpose-built developer bio](https://devbio.me/blogs/linktree-alternatives-compared) covers the same job for a fraction of the price.
In our own testing across these platforms, the deciding question was never the feature list. It was whether the page needed a checkout at all. If yours does not, [claim your handle and publish a bio in a few minutes](https://devbio.me).