Best self-hosted URL Shorteners apps

URL shortening is the action of shortening a URL to make it substantially shorter and still direct to the required page. Before hosting one, please see disadvantages of URL shorteners.

10 open source URL Shorteners tools you host on your own server — with full control of your data and no per-user cost.

YOURLS

★ 12,087

YOURLS is a set of PHP scripts that will allow you to run Your Own URL Shortener. Features include password protection, URL customization, bookmarklets, statistics, API, plugins, jsonp.

URL Shorteners MIT

Kutt

★ 10,928

Modern URL shortener with support for custom domains and custom URLs.

URL Shorteners MIT

Shlink

★ 5,116

URL shortener with REST API and command line interface. Includes official progressive web application and docker images.

URL Shorteners MIT

Chhoto URL

★ 881

Simple, lightning-fast URL shortener with no bloat (fork of simply-shorten).

URL Shorteners MIT

Flare

★ 120

A nonbloated, modern, and highly configurable file/screenshot vault server with support for ShareX, Flameshot, and Spectacle. Offers OCR search and more.

File Transfer - Single-click & Drag-n-drop UploadFile Transfer - Web-based File Managers MIT

bit

★ 94

Fast, lightweight, resource-efficient, compiled URL shortener.

URL Shorteners MIT

Simple-URL-Shortener

★ 58

KISS URL shortener, public or private (with account). Minimalist and lightweight. No dependencies.

URL Shorteners MIT

clink

A super-minimal link shortening service written in pure C, focusing on small executable size, portability, and ease of configuration.

URL Shorteners AGPL-3.0

Flink

Create QR Codes, embeddable link previews for your website and crawls/scrapes metadata.

URL Shorteners MIT

rs-short

Lightweight link shortener written in Rust, with features such as caching, spambot protection and phishing detection.

URL Shorteners MPL-2.0

Frequently asked questions

What are the best self-hosted URL Shorteners tools?

Among the 10 options, the most popular include YOURLS, Kutt, Shlink. Compare license, platform and popularity in the list below.

Is there a free open source alternative for URL Shorteners?

Yes — all 10 tools on this page are open source and you run them on your own server, with no monthly fee.

Where can I host a URL Shorteners app?

On a home server (homelab) or a cheap VPS from ~€4/mo. See the suggestions on this page.