Bitly is the giant of link management — and your printed codes live at bit.ly, an address you will never own.
Yes. Genuinely — go for it. Connect your Cloudflare, create your codes, print everything, then downgrade to Free or cancel entirely. The redirects run in your own Cloudflare account, so every printed code keeps resolving at no cost. Come back if the dashboard ever becomes worth paying for. That is not a loophole — it is the product working as designed.
| Bitly | OpenFlareQR | |
|---|---|---|
| Printed short URL | bit.ly/3xK9dQz — or a custom domain on paid plans, hosted on their infrastructure | qr.yourdomain.com/menu — your domain, your Cloudflare account |
| If you cancel | Dynamic QR features are tied to your plan; free tier allows 2 QR codes. Downgrade with a complimentary custom domain and Bitly stops renewing its registration and SSL — links degrade as those lapse | Every printed code keeps resolving on your Cloudflare, free. Nothing degrades, nothing to renew through us |
| Redirect infrastructure | Bitly's servers | A small open worker in your Cloudflare account — you can read it, and it runs whether or not we exist |
| Scan limits | Unlimited scans; QR code count and features metered by plan | Unlimited scans on every plan; we meter active managed codes only |
| Analytics data | Stored in Bitly's silo | Aggregate, cookieless scan data stored in your Cloudflare account |
| Exit path | Export CSVs of links; printed bit.ly codes cannot move to infrastructure you control | Export everything anytime + public runbook for managing redirects by hand |
Plan behaviours per Bitly’s published support docs and pricing as of Aug 2026 — always check their current terms.
If your world is social links, link-in-bio pages and marketing integrations at scale — and QR codes are a side dish — Bitly’s ecosystem is genuinely deep. And if you don’t own a domain and never want one, a fully hosted tool is simpler than our ten-minute Cloudflare setup.