Linktree is everywhere — Instagram bios, TikTok profiles, YouTube descriptions. For a lot of creators and freelancers, it's become the default answer to "where do people find all my stuff." But Linktree and Cardlyx aren't really solving the same problem, and it's worth being clear about where they overlap and where they don't before treating one as a substitute for the other.
What Linktree actually is
Linktree is a link-in-bio tool: a single page hosting a list of outbound links — your Instagram, your shop, your newsletter, your latest video. It's built for one direction of traffic: someone clicks through to wherever you're pointing them. It was never designed to be a business card, a contact exchange, or a lead capture tool, and it doesn't try to be.
Pricing, side by side
If you're only ever sharing links and never selling anything through the page, Linktree's free plan is genuinely free with no catch. The commission only becomes a real cost if you're using it to sell digital products — at that point, a creator making $500/month through the free plan is effectively paying $60/month in fees, more than Linktree's own Premium tier costs outright.
What neither replaces the other for
- Linktree doesn't capture the visitor's contact info back — someone clicking through your links leaves no trace with you unless they take a separate action (following, buying, messaging).
- Cardlyx doesn't organize a long list of outbound social links the way Linktree's grid layout does — it's built around being your contact card first, with links as a feature of that, not the entire product.
Where the two actually compete
The overlap is real for freelancers and creators who've been using Linktree as a stand-in for a professional card — putting portfolio links, booking calendars, and contact info into a Linktree page because it's familiar, not because it's the right tool. If that's your setup, here's what you're missing: no way to actually capture a lead from someone who visits, no CRM sync, and a page that only works as a destination, not as something you can also print a QR code for and hand someone at a networking event the way you would a card.
Where Cardlyx fits
Cardlyx replaces the "professional contact page" use case Linktree gets stretched into — portfolio, socials, booking link, all in one card — while adding what Linktree structurally can't: a lead capture gate that collects the other person's info when they engage with your card, synced automatically to HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, or Zoho. If you're a creator who sells digital products and needs a true link-in-bio commerce page, Linktree still does that job. If you're a freelancer or creator who wants your "here's all my stuff" link to also generate leads, Cardlyx is built for that specific gap.
Create your free Cardlyx card — no credit card required.