Beacons vs Stan Store

Beacons costs nothing until you sell; Stan Store costs $29 from day one and never takes a cut. Which one fits depends on what you sell and how much:

• Not selling yet, or selling under about $330 a month: Beacons. Its free plan takes 9% of each sale and nothing else.
• Selling more than that: either 0% plan. Beacons Creator Plus is $30 a month; Stan Creator is $29 plus a small payout fee. Billed yearly, both cost $300.
• You send email, use discount codes or want your own domain: Beacons. All three are on its $30 plan or below. On Stan, email broadcasts need the $99 plan, and custom domains aren't offered.
• You sell courses, calls and memberships and want buyers in a community: Stan. All of it is on the $29 plan.

Checked 24 October 2026 against each company's own pages: Beacons' pricing page and help center, and Stan's plan comparison, fee article and pricing post. Stan has no pricing page on stan.store, so its prices come from its help center and blog. Features marked 8 October were read then and not re-read.

Beacons vs Stan Store, line by line

In 2026, only Beacons' top plan moved

• Creator Max went from $90 to $100 a month between 14 August and 28 September 2026, per archived copies of Beacons' pricing page, and from $900 to $1,000 a year between 13 and 24 October. Creator Plus, at $30, is the plan that competes with Stan, and it hasn't moved; it now lists unlimited daily AI credits.
• Stan's prices haven't changed: Creator $29 a month or $300 a year, Creator Pro $99 or $948. Only the address moved: stan.store/pricing now shows a store "under construction" page, so Stan's help center is the source.

Under about $330 a month in sales, Beacons Free is cheaper

What you pay is the plan, plus the cut, plus Stan's payout fee, here with one cash-out a month:

What you pay each month: the plan, billed monthly, plus the platform's cut, plus one payout a month (Stan Store: 0.25% + $0.25 per payout, $1 minimum). Card processing comes on top on every plan and is left out.

Card processing comes on top on both. Stripe's US rate is 2.9% + 30¢, about $20.50 at $500 and $82 at $2,000. Stan lists 1.5% more when the buyer is in another country.

• Under about $330 a month in sales, Beacons Free is the cheapest. That's where 9% passes either 0% plan. Billed yearly, Free stays cheapest only up to about $280.
• Up to about $300 a month, the two 0% plans cost the same $30, because Stan's payout fee has a $1 minimum. Above that, Stan Creator costs a little more: $4.25 more at $2,000. Billed yearly, both plans are $300 and the payout fee is the only difference.
• Past about $222 a month in sales, Beacons Creator at $10 costs more than Stan Creator. It's the plan to skip if you sell.

The same comparison against other tools is in our link in bio fees breakdown. Linktree, for one, now sells at 0% on its $17 Pro plan; see Linktree vs Beacons.

Email, discount codes and upsells: $30 on Beacons, $99 on Stan

This is where the two pull furthest apart. Beacons puts contact import on every plan, and unlimited email, buy now pay later and ad pixels on Creator Plus at $30. Stan puts all of them on Creator Pro at $99.

If you need two of those, that's $69 a month less on Beacons Creator Plus than on Stan's Creator Pro.

Courses cost the same; Stan adds the community

Both sell courses. Stan's Creator plan has an unlimited course builder. Beacons' Free and Creator plans allow one course without video hosting; Creator Plus allows unlimited courses with video hosting.

Memberships are on Stan Creator as recurring subscriptions, and on Beacons from Creator Plus. Stan also runs communities and webinars on Creator, per its pricing post; Beacons' pricing page doesn't list a community.

For courses, the price is a wash: $29 on Stan, $30 on Beacons Creator Plus. Pick Stan if the course comes with a community. Pick Beacons if you'll email your students, or want to test one text-only course on the free plan first.

Calls and Instagram DMs: both have them; Stan adds Zoom

Both sell paid calls against a Google Calendar. Stan's coaching calls also connect Zoom and handle availability, buffers and group calls, all on the $29 plan. Beacons sells appointments from its store with Google Calendar sync; checking several calendars for conflicts is a Creator Plus feature.

Both answer Instagram comments with automatic DMs. On Beacons it's on every plan; the advanced version carries Beacons branding until Creator Plus. On Stan it's Stan AutoDM, on Creator.

Design and domain: Beacons gives you more

Beacons lets you change templates, colors, fonts and backgrounds on every plan, and connects your own domain from Creator at $10, free for the first year per its help center. Its media kit updates daily from your linked accounts, on every plan (checked 2 October 2026).

Stan starts every store from 11 link-in-bio templates where you change colors and fonts, with no custom code. The store lives at stan.store/yourname; Stan's help center says "you cannot create or embed a custom domain", so forwarding a domain you own is the only way.

Getting paid: Stan manages the Stripe account; Beacons uses yours

Stan runs payments through a Stripe account it sets up and manages for you, or PayPal, and charges 0.25% + $0.25 on each payout. Beacons connects Stripe or PayPal, with Apple Pay, Google Pay and, from Creator Plus, Klarna and Affirm.

Switching: export first, cancel memberships last

1. Export your contacts first. Beacons exports its audience on every plan. On Stan, download your customer list before you change anything.
2. Rebuild products and call types at the same prices, with the same session lengths.
3. Open the new calendar after the last call already booked on the old one, so nobody is booked twice.
4. Set course students and members up on the new platform before you announce the move, and give them a date.
5. Leaving Stan: cancel each customer's membership yourself, then your plan. Cash out your balance first.
6. Leaving Beacons: unpublish your products, then cancel. Beacons puts you back on Free, where anything still for sale carries the 9% cut.
7. Swap the URL in every bio in one sitting.

A third option: InBio

InBio is the simplest of the three to start: a clean page in a minute. On Business, $29 a month or $290 a year, it sells digital downloads and paid one-to-one calls at 0% through your own Stripe. Calls book against live availability, so a slot can't be sold twice.

It doesn't host courses, send email or run memberships, and it has no custom domain, up to 50 cards a page and US-dollar prices only. For those, Beacons Creator Plus or Stan fits better.

Who should pick what

• Not selling yet, or under about $330 a month in sales: Beacons Free.
• Selling more, and you email your list: Beacons Creator Plus, $30 a month or $300 a year.
• Selling courses, calls and memberships with a community: Stan Creator, $29 a month or $300 a year.
• You need your own domain: Beacons, from Creator at $10.
• A clean page first, with downloads and paid calls when you're ready: InBio.

Pick by what you sell this month; both let you change plans later. If you go with Stan, start the trial when your first product is ready, so the 14 days count. For more options, see our Beacons alternatives and Stan Store alternatives.

We make InBio. All three tools, InBio included, were checked the same way, on each company's own pricing pages and help center on 24 Oct 2026. How we checked, and every tool in one table.

More head to head: Linktree vs Beacons, Linktree vs Stan Store.