What happens to Bitly QR codes when you cancel or downgrade
Published · by Support Team
Short answer, from Bitly's own support documentation: QR
codes built on the default bit.ly domain keep redirecting after
you downgrade to the free plan, and even after you delete your account. What
you lose is the ability to change where they point, along with
analytics and the right to create more than two new codes a month. Codes on
a custom or complimentary domain are a different story and can stop working.
Everything below was checked against Bitly's help centre and pricing page on
September 29, 2026; if you are reading this much later, re-check before you
rely on it.
Full disclosure: QRCR.us is a pay-per-scan alternative to Bitly's QR codes. We are writing this because most pages on the topic are scarier than the facts, and a frightened reprint is expensive.
What Bitly says happens when you downgrade
Bitly's help article "What happens when I downgrade to a lower subscription
plan?" is unusually clear. You keep your paid features until the end of the
billing period. After that, in Bitly's words, "your bit.ly links continue to
work after you downgrade your account," and "because each QR Code created in
Bitly is basically a scannable form of a short link, the effect of
downgrading your account is the same for QR Codes as it is for short links."
So a printed code that encodes a bit.ly/... link does not die
when you drop to Free.
The exceptions are domains. If your codes use your own custom domain and you move to a plan without custom domains, existing links "will continue to work as long as the domain's DNS settings point to Bitly," but Bitly stops renewing the SSL certificate, so scanners eventually see a browser "not secure" warning rather than a 404. If your codes use a complimentary domain Bitly gave you with a paid plan, Bitly stops renewing that registration and "when that registration expires, any links using that domain will stop working." The expiry date is shown on the downgrade confirmation screen. Write it down.
What happens if you delete the account
Deletion is the harsher case and still gentler than most people assume. Bitly's article on account deletion says links on the default domain "will continue to work," and "any QR Codes created with bit.ly links, and any QR Codes that you created without customizing the link at all, will continue to work." You lose editing, redirects and metrics permanently, and complimentary domains break when their one-year registration lapses. The short codes are also never reusable, so nobody else can take over your printed code.
The thing you actually lose: control
A printed code that keeps redirecting is only useful if it redirects to the right place. On Bitly the ability to change a link's destination is a paid feature called a redirect, and on the pricing page at the time of writing the Free plan lists no redirects at all; paid plans include a monthly allowance (five a month on Core, twenty on Growth, one hundred and ten on Premium). So after downgrading to Free your codes are not dead, they are frozen: whatever URL they pointed at on the day you cancelled is where they point forever, unless you pay again. If that URL is a menu PDF you will replace next season, or a campaign page you will retire, the freeze is the real cost.
For scale: Core is $10 a month billed annually ($120 a year), Growth $29 a month billed annually or $35 month-to-month, Premium $199 a month billed annually or $300 month-to-month. The Free plan allows two new QR codes a month with unlimited scans. All of those numbers are from Bitly's pricing page as of September 2026.
Before you cancel: a five-item checklist
1. List every printed code and read its underlying link.
Anything on bit.ly is safe to keep. Anything on a custom or
complimentary domain needs a plan.
2. Point each code at its long-term destination now, while you still have redirects. Choose a URL you control and expect to keep, not a seasonal page.
3. Note the complimentary domain expiry date from the downgrade screen and put a calendar reminder a month earlier.
4. Export your scan data if you want it; metrics stop being available on the free plan and vanish with deletion.
5. Downgrade rather than delete unless you have a reason not to. A free account keeps the door open to buy a month of redirects later if a destination has to change.
Avoiding the freeze next time
The freeze is a property of subscription pricing, not of Bitly specifically: the subscription is what buys the right to edit. There are two ways around it. If the destination will genuinely never change, a static code pointing at a page you own cannot be frozen by anyone. If it might change, pick a dynamic provider whose pricing does not lapse. QRCR.us sells scan credits once, with no plan to cancel: editing the destination is always free, credits never expire, and a code whose balance runs out pauses on a short holding page until you top up, then resumes with nothing reprinted. Whether that beats a subscription depends on your scan volume; the arithmetic is in our 2026 pricing comparison, including the volumes at which Bitly is the cheaper choice.
If a Bitly code of yours has already stopped, the cause is almost always one of the domain cases above or a destination that moved. Our 60-second diagnosis will tell you which.
- Try it on a real code Every QRCR.us account starts with 25 free scans, and every new code redirects free for its first 24 hours — no card required. Create a dynamic QR code and see it work before you spend anything.