Bento's gone. Folio is where your work lives now.

The short answer.

Folio is the closest free replacement for Bento in 2026. You get the same grid-style page for your work and links, there's no paywall, and it adds the one thing Bento never built: a private, password-gated way to get paid. If you sell digital products to a big audience, Beacons fits you better. If you only need a plain list of buttons, Linktree is fine.

What actually happened to Bento.

Linktree acquired Bento in 2023 and kept it running for about two and a half years. On February 13, 2026 it shut down for good. There was no export and no automatic move. Today every bento.me address, including your old profile, redirects to Linktree's homepage. Your page isn't parked somewhere, it's gone. We re-checked on August 17, 2026: bento.me still redirects straight to linktr.ee, six months after the shutdown.

That stings because Bento wasn't just another link tool. Its whole pitch was "a link in bio, but rich and beautiful", and designers, photographers and other freelancers picked it exactly because their page looked as good as their work. Those people didn't ask to be moved to a list of identical buttons.

What to look for in a replacement.

If you loved Bento, you're really looking for three things. A grid, because a wall of same-sized buttons flattens your work into a menu. Real media, because screenshots of your projects, photos and video are the reason a client keeps scrolling. And no paywall creep, because Bento people remember what it felt like when the tool they built on changed under them.

It's also worth asking for the thing Bento never solved. A bio link gets a client interested, and then the money conversation still happens in a DM. A replacement that only replaces the page leaves that gap open.

Why Folio is the natural home.

Folio is built by freelancers who used Bento themselves. Your page is a bento grid: drop in portfolio images and video, links, your socials and a contact card, drag things around and it looks designed without any design work. It's free with no paywall, there are no ads or sponsored links on your page, and your handle is a clean folio.link/you.

The part Bento never had is Pay-Me. You put your payment details behind a password and give that password to the client you're working with. They see exactly how to pay you, nobody else sees anything, and Folio never touches the money. You keep 100%. Considering that around 85% of freelancers get paid late at least sometimes, the payment step deserves a real home instead of a DM.

The other options, honestly.

Folio isn't the right answer for everyone, so here's the fair version. Linktree is the default for a reason: huge, stable and integrated with everything. If you're an influencer pointing a crowd at one offer, it does the job, you'll just never look different from anyone else and the useful features cost a monthly fee. Beacons and Stan Store are built for creators selling digital products, courses and brand deals. If that's your income, they're genuinely better at it than Folio. Carrd gives you a full one-page site for a few dollars a year and suits people who want total control and don't mind building. Liinks is a small, tasteful Bento-style option worth a look too.

Where Folio wins is the specific case Bento served best: a freelancer who wants one beautiful link that shows their work, looks legit to a client and handles the getting-paid part without awkwardness. That's the whole product.

The bento-style grid didn't die with Bento.

Funny thing about Bento: the product is gone but the layout it popularized is everywhere, in dashboards, on landing pages, across Apple's marketing. A bento grid works for portfolios because it gives each piece its own weight. Your best project gets a big tile, your socials sit small in the corner and the page has a hierarchy a list of buttons can never have. If you came here searching for a bento-style link in bio, that's exactly what Folio is: the grid is the product, not a premium theme.

Rebuilding takes about ten minutes.

There's no import from Bento because there's nothing left to import from. The good news: your old page probably lives on in the Wayback Machine. Search web.archive.org for bento.me/yourhandle, open the latest snapshot and you've got every link and image you had. From there, claim your handle, add your work and swap the link in your bios. The full walkthrough is in our Bento migration guide.

Questions