The best free Bandcamp code tool for artists on a budget (2026)
Full disclosure: we make one of these tools. GetMusic publishes this page, so we are biased. We have tried to earn your trust anyway by ranking by what fits you, saying plainly where a competitor is better, and putting GetMusic below it when it is.
"Free" means four different things across the Bandcamp code tools, and the differences matter more than the feature lists. One tool is free with no limit at all. One is free for two releases. One is free because it is Bandcamp itself. And GetMusic, the site you are reading, is free for exactly one release and then $10 per release after that. That last fact is the reason GetMusic is fourth on this list and not first.
What follows is the free options ranked by how much you get before money changes hands, with the exact limit on each so you can match it to how many releases you have. The audience for this page is an artist who would rather spend an evening than ten dollars, and we have written it with that person in mind.
TL;DR
- Band.codes — free, unlimited releases — the default free pick, full stop
- dlcm.app — free for 2 releases, unlimited codes — if you want tidier per-release pages and might pay $50/year later
- Bandcamp's own export — free, 200 codes to start — if you have a mailing list and Mailchimp
- GetMusic — free for one release, then $10 each — if that one release needs new listeners, not just a dispenser
- Sharing by hand — free — Reddit, Discord, a newsletter; costs you time and tracking
1. Band.codes
- Best for
- Any artist or label who needs a free link that hands out codes and never wants a bill
- Price
- Free. Donation-supported
- Free limit
- Unlimited releases, no paid tier to upsell you into
Band.codes is the answer to the literal question. It is free for artists and labels, there is no release cap, and it has stayed that way long enough to earn a reputation in underground and DIY scenes. You drop a batch of Bandcamp codes, get a link, customise the embed if you want, and fans grab a code without signing up. A redemption count ticks down as they go.
The limits are the same as they have always been. You get a count, not a list of who claimed. There is a community feed of releases, but genre browsing is thin, so most of your claims will come from wherever you post the link. If you have somewhere to post it, that is fine.
If you came here for "free" and nothing else, you can stop reading. The rest of the list is for people with a second requirement.
2. dlcm.app (Download Code Manager)
- Best for
- Artists with one or two releases who want a cleaner public profile and a clear upgrade path
- Price
- Free for 2 releases with unlimited codes; Pro is $5/month or $50/year for unlimited releases
- Free limit
- 2 releases free, then Pro
dlcm.app is a one-developer project that stores Bandcamp codes, ties each one to a release, hands them out one at a time, and marks which have been used. The free tier gives you two releases, unlimited codes, manual code upload, a public profile page, and a dedicated page per release. For an artist with an album and a single, that covers everything.
Pro at $5 a month or $50 a year lifts the release cap and adds password-protected pages, custom URLs, release copy, active/inactive toggles, Bandcamp CSV upload, a Bandcamp player embed, and social links. The CSV upload alone is worth knowing about, because on the free tier you are pasting codes in by hand.
Like Band.codes, it has no audience of its own. Fans arrive only from links you share, and analytics stop at used/unused. It sits above Bandcamp's export here because the release pages are nicer to send people to than a mail-merge, and above GetMusic because two free releases beat one. Our dlcm.app alternative page goes into more detail.
3. Bandcamp's own export plus Mailchimp
- Best for
- Artists who already run a mailing list and only want to reach the people on it
- Price
- Free. 200 codes per account to start, 1,000 more per $500 in sales, more purchasable on the Tools page
- Free limit
- No release limit; the code allowance is the constraint
This is the zero-tool option, and it is more capable than people assume. Every Bandcamp account gets 200 track or album codes. You generate them per release on the Tools page, export the CSV, and Bandcamp's documentation walks you through mail-merging one code per subscriber in Mailchimp or Constant Contact. Fans redeem at bandcamp.com/yum.
The Tools page shows how many codes in the set were redeemed. It cannot tell you who, or where they found it, and there is no public place where someone who has never heard of you stumbles on your codes. Everything depends on the list you already have.
If you have the list, there is no reason to add a tool between you and it. If you do not have the list, this option is a code generator and nothing more, and you should treat it as step one for whichever pick above or below you choose.
4. GetMusic
- Best for
- Artists with one release right now who need it to reach people they do not already know
- Price
- First release promotion free (up to 100 codes); $10 one time per additional release; no subscription; labels have custom pricing
- Free limit
- One release free. The second costs $10
GetMusic is free once. The first release promotion includes artist setup, a dedicated URL, a release page built from your Bandcamp link, up to 100 codes, and placement on the genre shelves and ranked feeds where fans browse and claim without an account. Every code is validated against Bandcamp before it is served, and you get a per-claim list of who claimed, when, and where they came from.
After that it is $10 per release, one time, not a subscription. For an artist on a budget, that is the honest reason it ranks below three free options. If you put out six releases a year, Band.codes costs you nothing and GetMusic costs you $50, and the thing you are paying for is a browsing audience plus a claim list. Whether that is worth $10 a release depends entirely on whether you have an audience already.
Where it fits on a budget: use the free first release for the one record that most needs strangers to hear it, and run the rest through Band.codes or dlcm.app.
5. Sharing by hand
- Best for
- Artists with an active Discord, subreddit, or newsletter and a small batch of codes
- Price
- Free. Costs time
- Free limit
- No limit and no tracking at all
Posting codes directly in a Discord channel, a genre subreddit, or the bottom of a newsletter is free and immediate, and for a run of ten or twenty codes it is often all you need. Fans paste the code at bandcamp.com/yum and that is the end of it.
The problems scale with the batch. Posted codes get copied and hoarded, you cannot tell which ones were used until you check the Bandcamp Tools page, and a code pasted in public is a code anyone can take. There is no claim list and no way to split a batch for testing.
It belongs on this list because it is the baseline every tool is trying to beat, and for a handful of codes to a community that already knows you, it still wins on effort.
What we'd do today
- Count your releases for the next twelve months. One or two: dlcm.app free or GetMusic's free first release. Three or more and no budget: Band.codes.
- Generate the codes on each release's Bandcamp Tools page and export the CSV. This step is the same no matter what you pick.
- If you have a mailing list, send half the batch through Mailchimp from the Bandcamp CSV before you touch any third-party tool. It is free and reaches the people most likely to redeem.
- Put the other half on the free tool you chose. Do not upload the same codes to two places; a fan will burn one in the first and the second will still show it as available.
- If after a month the claims are all from people you already knew, that is the signal to spend the one free GetMusic release on the next record and see whether a browsing audience changes the mix.
Frequently asked questions
Spend the free one on the release that needs it
GetMusic gives you one free release promotion: a page built from your Bandcamp URL, up to 100 validated codes, a spot on the genre shelves, and a list of who claimed. After that it is $10 per release, and you can keep the rest on Band.codes with a clear conscience.
Written by Chuck Blake, founder of GetMusic.
GetMusic is a Bandcamp code distribution platform, so this page has a bias and says so. Competitor features and prices were checked against each company's public pages in October 2026; if something has changed, tell us and we will fix the page. More about who we are is on the about page and in GetMusic by the numbers.