Which link in bio tools have a real checkout?

The word checkout is doing a lot of work in this category's marketing, so the first job is deciding what actually counts as one.

What counts as a real checkout in a link in bio tool?

Three things have to be true. The buyer enters their card on the tool's own page rather than being handed off. The payment completes there. And the product, if it is a file, gets delivered without you doing anything.

A tip jar is not a checkout. A PayPal.me link is not a checkout. A button that opens somebody else's hosted page is not a checkout either, though it is a perfectly good way to sell and half the tools in this category do exactly that. The distinction matters because the tools that only link out charge you nothing per sale, and the tools that take the payment charge you between 5% and 12%.

Which link in bio tools take payment themselves, and what do they charge?

Seven, at the rates their own pricing pages publish. Every percentage sits on top of card processing, so add roughly 2.9% + $0.30 to each of them.

Tool	Free plan cut	Paid plans	Lowest cut
Beacons	9%	$10 / $30 / $90	0% from $30
hoo.be	9%	$9.99 / $29.99	0% from $29.99
Ko-fi	5% on shop sales	$12 Gold	0% on Gold
Komi	Cannot sell on free	$16 to $20	Not published
Linktree	12%	Prices vary by region	0% on Premium
Milkshake	12%	$2.99 / $6.99 / $10	7% on Pro+
Planoly	No free selling tier	$14 / $24 / $47	0%, all plans
Stakk	10% + $0.50, processing included	None	10% + $0.50

Two notes on that table. Linktree's prices are shown in local currency and vary by region, so I could not render a single set of numbers to publish; the fee percentages are confirmed in its help centre and the plan prices are not. And Milkshake never reaches 0%, bottoming out at 7% on its top plan, which is unusual in this group.

Ko-fi is the odd one in a useful way. Its pricing page puts shop sales at 5% with no monthly fee, or 0% on Gold at $12 a month, and tips at 0% if you stay on Ko-fi Free. If what you are selling is small and occasional, that shape fits better than a percentage plan, and how it compares to Buy Me a Coffee is its own question.

Which ones do not have a checkout?

Shorby and Campsite.bio, of the ones I could verify.

Shorby has no payment layer at all. Its terms name Stripe only for billing Shorby's own subscription, and there is no creator payment flow anywhere on the site. Campsite.bio has a Tip Jar that runs on PayPal and Venmo, which is a tip jar rather than a product checkout, and no fee percentage appears on any page I could reach.

Bento is gone. Every path on bento.me now redirects permanently to Linktree, so if you are reading an older comparison that recommends it, that is why.

Two more tools could not be checked at all, because their own domains refused every request I made: Lnk.bio and Tap.bio. I would rather leave them out of the table than quote a figure from somebody's review site.

Does the tool let you use your own Stripe account?

Mostly yes, and there is a distinction inside that yes worth knowing.

Beacons, Milkshake, Ko-fi and Planoly all connect a payment account in your name. Milkshake's terms go furthest: you are the seller of record, and Milkshake describes itself as a technology provider that is not a party to the transaction, using a Stripe Standard connected account in your name.

Linktree is different. Its payout documentation says creators "get connected with a Stripe express account", which means Linktree provisions and administers it. With a Stripe Standard account you log into Stripe directly, see every charge, set your own payout schedule and keep the account if you leave. With an Express account you do not. The difference is covered properly here, and it is the single most overlooked thing in this category.

Should you use a link in bio tool as your whole store?

If you sell one or two things and the traffic comes from social, yes. The buyer is already on a phone, tapping through from a profile, and adding a second destination costs you sales for no benefit.

It stops making sense when the percentage starts to hurt. 9% or 12% on a free plan is a lot on a $49 product, and the fix these tools offer is a monthly subscription to bring the rate down, which only pays off above a volume most people never state out loud when they recommend it. Work out your own break-even before you upgrade: a $30 plan to save 9% needs $333 of monthly sales just to draw level.

The other limit is what happens after the sale. Most of these tools give you a list of products and a payment, and nothing that sells a second item to a buyer who has just proven they will buy.

When would I send you somewhere else?

If you want the whole link-in-bio surface, Stakk is the wrong choice. It is a checkout, not a profile page. It has no link list, no social icon grid, no analytics on outbound clicks, and no theme gallery. Beacons and Milkshake do that job and Stakk does not try to.

If cost is the deciding factor, Systeme.io is free at 0% and Payhip is 5% on a free plan, both of which beat us. And Stakk has no subscriptions, no course hosting, no booking, no prices above $999 and no currency other than US dollars, so any of those rules us out on its own.

Want a checkout behind your link?

The common setup is a link-in-bio page you like pointing at a checkout that does the selling. Stakk is built to be the second half of that: a product page and a payment link, the money landing in your own Stripe account, 10% + $0.50 a sale with card processing included, and no monthly fee to bring the rate down to.

Cheaper exists, and I have named it twice. What the tools above do not ship is an order bump and a post-purchase upsell on every account with nothing behind a tier. The bump rides the same charge as the product so it carries one fee rather than two, and the upsell is one tap against the card already on file. On a buyer who arrived from a story and will not be back, that second offer is the only one you get. The layout came out of funnels that ran for agency clients before Stakk existed.

Start selling on Stakk, free