Comparison
Herd vs Beacons
A creator toolkit built around a link-in-bio page, with a storefront, an auto-updating media kit, email and invoicing attached to it. This page puts it beside Herd for UK creators, with the pricing checked on 21 September 2026 and the places Beacons wins written down as such.
Herd at a glance
- Plans
- From £99/month for creators, in GBP
- Covers
- Creators, brands and agencies in one account, on the same deal record
- Based
- United Kingdom. Herd UK Ltd, registered in England & Wales
- Best for
- UK creators who want the content, the paperwork and the money in one system rather than in eleven tabs
Beacons at a glance
- Pricing
- Free with a 9% seller fee, then $10, $30 or $90 a month in USD, with the seller fee dropping to 0% from Creator Plus upwards.
- Head office
- San Francisco, US
- Best for
- Creators whose income comes from a link in a bio: digital products, courses and an audience they sell to directly. If the link page is the business, Beacons is built for that and Herd is not.
Pricing last checked 21 September 2026 from home.beacons.ai.
Prices in USD; features change, check Beacons' site before deciding.
The short version
Beacons is the better product if your money comes from your own audience through a link in a bio. Herd is the better product if your money comes from brands, because that is where the deals, the paperwork, the inbox and the invoices live. They overlap on the media kit and very little else.
Beacons is run from San Francisco, US. It suits creators whose income comes from a link in a bio: digital products, courses and an audience they sell to directly. If the link page is the business, Beacons is built for that and Herd is not.
Herd is a UK product with three sides in one account. Creators run content, deals, contracts and invoices. Brands run campaigns, review content and pay creator invoices by card. Agencies run a roster with commission splits and white-label client portals. Herd costs from £99/month for creators, billed in pounds. That breadth is the whole trade: Herd covers more of the week, and in a few places it covers it less thoroughly than Beacons does.
Feature by feature
Every line in the Herd column is a feature that works today. The Beacons column is what its own site and the listings we read showed on 21 September 2026: a dash means we could not find the feature there, and a plan name in the Herd column is the plan the feature starts on.
| Feature | Herd | Beacons |
|---|---|---|
| Who it is for | ||
| Creators | Free, £99 or £299 a month | Free to $90 a month |
| Brands | £999 a month | No |
| Agencies and talent managers | £1,999 a month | No |
| Content | ||
| Link-in-bio page | No | Yes |
| Content calendar and drafts | Yes | No |
| Publishing to social networks | Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X | No |
| Video editor with server-side export | Yes | No |
| Media kit | Live page at herduk.co.uk/yourname | Auto-updating media kit |
| Deals & paperwork | ||
| Deals pipeline | Yes | No |
| Proposals with accept or decline | Yes | No |
| Contracts with e-signature | Pro | No |
| Rate card | Yes | No |
| Money | ||
| Invoices with a card pay link | Starter and above | Yes |
| Storefront for products and courses | Digital products and memberships, no courses | Full storefront |
| Fee on product sales | 5% | 9%, or 0% from Creator Plus |
| Expenses, cashflow and tax view | Pro | No |
| Communication | ||
| Gmail or Outlook inbox | Starter and above | No |
| Video meetings with guest links | Yes | No |
| Pricing & billing | ||
| Currency | GBP | USD |
| Free plan | Yes, for creators | Yes, with a 9% seller fee |
Where Beacons is stronger
Nothing below is a concession for the sake of looking fair. These are the parts of Beacons that Herd either does not have or does less well, and if one of them is the deciding factor for you, buy Beacons.
- A proper link-in-bio product. Herd does not have one at all.
- A mature storefront for digital products, courses and memberships, with a longer track record than ours.
- A free tier that is genuinely usable, where Herd asks £99 a month before you can send a real invoice.
- A much larger and longer-established user base. Herd opened in September 2026.
- Priced in dollars at $10 a month, which is a different order of cost to Herd.
What Herd adds
The other direction. These are jobs Herd covers that we could not find in Beacons' published feature list when we checked on 21 September 2026, taken from the same list as the table above, plus the differences in how the two are priced. Some of them sit on the higher Herd plans, and the pricing below says which.
- No content calendar and no publishing to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or X.
- No Gmail or Outlook inbox, so brand conversations stay in a separate tab.
- No deals pipeline, no proposals and no contracts with e-signature.
- No video meetings and no calendar sync.
- Nothing for the brand or the agency you work with. Beacons is one-sided.
- USD only, with no UK expenses, cashflow or tax view.
Pricing side by side
Free with a 9% seller fee, then $10, $30 or $90 a month in USD, with the seller fee dropping to 0% from Creator Plus upwards. Those figures are from Beacons' own pricing page, last checked on 21 September 2026. Herd is priced in pounds and costs from £99/month for creators, with 17% off when you pay for the year and a 14-day cooling-off period on every paid plan.
Herd, in pounds
For creators
- FreeFree, no card
- Starter£99/month, £986/year
- Pro£299/month, £2,978/year
Annual billing saves 17% on creator and Brand plans and 20% on the Agency plan. 14-day cooling-off on every paid plan. Brands and agencies can book a live demo before subscribing.
Beacons, as published
- Free$0
per month · 9% seller fee
- Creator$10/mo or $100/yr
USD · 9% seller fee
- Creator Plus$30/mo or $300/yr
USD · 0% seller fee
- Creator Max$90/mo or $900/yr
USD
Pricing last checked 21 September 2026 from home.beacons.ai.
Those figures are from Beacons' own pricing page, last checked on 21 September 2026.
Prices in USD; features change, check Beacons' site before deciding.
What people say
We have no data of our own on how Beacons treats its customers, and no opinion to add. What follows is a summary of public reviews as they stood on 21 September 2026, each linked to its source so you can read them and make your own mind up. Review scores move, so check the source rather than this page.
When we checked on 21 September 2026, Beacons had a Trustpilot score of 1.9 out of 5, with roughly 78% of ratings at one star. The recurring themes in those reviews were affiliate payouts that get stuck, slow support replies, plan upgrades customers say they did not agree to, and account suspensions.
Source: trustpilot.com
Media kit
A page a brand can read before they reply
The media kit is a live page rather than a PDF that goes stale in a download folder. It takes its per-network numbers from the accounts you have connected, sits next to your rate card, and keeps the same link when you update it.
- A public page at herduk.co.uk/yourname with per-network figures from your connected accounts.
- A rate card of priced packages you can share, and proposals built from those same packages.
- You decide when it goes public, and the link does not change afterwards.
Herd and Beacons, asked and answered
- No. Beacons starts at $10 a month and has a usable free tier. Herd is free to explore, but sending a real invoice starts at £99 a month. If price is the deciding factor, Beacons wins.
- No. Herd has a public profile and media kit at herduk.co.uk/yourname, which is a page a brand reads rather than a set of links you send an audience to. If you need a link hub, keep using Beacons or Linktree alongside Herd.
- Not as a course product with lessons and progress. Herd sells digital products and runs memberships through Stripe, with a 5% platform fee on products. Beacons has the fuller storefront.
- Publishing to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and X, a content calendar, a Gmail or Outlook inbox, a deals pipeline, proposals, contracts with e-signature, video meetings, and UK expenses, cashflow and tax reporting. Beacons is a creator storefront. Herd is a creator business.
Creator pricing
Start free and stay there as long as you like. Paid plans add real invoices, the inbox, the media kit and everything else.
Free
Have a proper look around
£0/month
No card needed.
- Content calendar and drafts
- One draft deal to set up
- Invoice preview
- Dashboard with sample data
- Video editor · 1 watermarked export a month
- Community
- Send invoices or activate deals
- Inbox, meetings, media kit
- 7 days of history
- No social integrations
Starter
Run the business by hand
£99/month
Billed monthly. Cancel from your settings at any time.
- Active deals · Up to 5 at a time
- Send invoices your clients pay by card through Stripe
- Stripe payouts to your own bank
- Gmail or Outlook inbox and opportunities queue
- Live media kit, rate card and video meetings
- Video exports · 5 a month, no watermark
- Social integrations · 2 connected accounts
- Contracts, expenses, products and memberships
- 90 days of history
- No automated reminders
Pro
The whole business, no limits
£299/month
Billed monthly. Cancel from your settings at any time.
- Unlimited active deals and video exports
- Contracts with e-signature
- Proposals to brands and agencies
- Payments page with your Stripe balance and payout history
- Digital products and memberships
- Expenses, cashflow and tax-ready exports
- Asset library and email
- Unlimited social integrations
- Prices in GBP. VAT added where applicable.
- Annual billing saves 17% on creator and Brand plans and 20% on the Agency plan.
- 14-day cooling-off period on every paid plan.
- Card payment through Stripe. Cancel from your settings at any time.
- Platform fee on digital product sales: 5%.
Keep reading
The switching notes for Beacons, the other comparisons UK creators tend to read, and how Herd works day to day.
Herd has a page for each side of the market: creators, brands and agencies. The full list of what the product does is on the features page, and every plan and fee is on the pricing page.
- Beacons alternativeWhat changes if you move, what you give up, and the steps for leaving Beacons.
- Herd vs KitlyA media kit and collaboration tracker for creators, with a separate product, Kitly Business, for agencies managing a roster.
- Herd vs LaterA social media scheduler with a visual planner, publishing to seven or more networks, a link-in-bio page and post analytics.
- Herd vs CollabstrA two-sided marketplace where creators list packages with published rates and brands book them through escrow.
- How creators use HerdA working week on Herd from the creator side, feature by feature.
Run the business side from one screen
Plan the week, send the invoice, sign the contract and watch the money land in your own bank account.
The free plan does not expire and needs no card.