The Best Free URL Shorteners in 2026 (Tested, Real Free-Plan Limits)

If you searched "best free URL shortener" expecting the answer to be simple, you have probably already noticed the catch: "free" is not what it used to be. Over the past few years, the link caps shrank, analytics moved behind paywalls, and at least one major name started inserting an ad page between your link and its destination. Zapier puts it bluntly in its own roundup — "the free plans of most apps on this list have gotten markedly worse over the past few years", a trend it attributes to spam abuse and a broad pivot toward business analytics.

So this guide does the boring-but-useful thing: it states the real free-plan numbers for eight popular shorteners as verified in May 2026, side by side, with no affiliate fluff. We will tell you exactly how many free links you get, whether you get analytics, whether there are ads on the redirect, and who each tool is actually for. One disclosure up front, because it matters for trust: Minily is our product. We have listed it below with the same honesty as everything else — including its real limits (only 5 free links, and no public API). It earns its place on specific criteria, not by being crowned number one.

How we evaluated these free URL shorteners

"Best" is meaningless without criteria, so here are ours. Every tool below is judged on the same eight questions, and the answers are what fill the comparison table.

• Free link limit. The single number that decides whether a free plan is usable for you. We note whether it is a monthly allowance or a hard lifetime cap, because that distinction is huge.
• Ads or interstitials on the redirect. Does clicking the short link send the visitor straight to the destination, or through an ad/preview page first? A clean redirect is worth a lot.
• Analytics on free. Do you get click data without paying — and how deep does it go (totals only, or geography, device, referrer)?
• Custom alias, branded link, or custom domain on free. Can you control how the link looks, and can you put it on your own domain?
• QR codes on free. Included or rationed?
• Link permanence and editability. Do links expire, and can you change the destination after creating one?
• Privacy and data location. Where is the data hosted, and is the analytics export GDPR-friendly?
• Sign-up required vs. anonymous. Can you shorten a link without an account at all?

One honest caveat that applies to this entire article: free plans change constantly. Every figure below was checked against the vendor's own pricing or support page in May 2026, and we link each source so you can re-verify. Before you commit, open the provider's pricing page and confirm — especially for tools that have been quietly restructuring their free tiers.

One thing we deliberately do not do: rank the tools one through eight. A numbered ranking implies a single best answer, and there isn't one. The "best for branded links" plan and the "best for quick anonymous links" plan are different products solving different problems, and forcing them into the same leaderboard helps nobody. So the sections below are grouped by what each tool does well, and the comparison table lets you weigh the criteria that matter to you. If you only care about three of the eight columns, ignore the other five.

Comparison table at a glance

This is the part most people scroll straight to. Read the cells, then jump to the section of whichever tool catches your eye for the full detail and the caveats.

Tool	Free links	Ads on redirect?	Analytics (free)	Custom domain (free)	QR codes	API on free	Best for
TinyURL	No publicized hard cap	No	None	No	Yes (auto)	Limited	Quick anonymous links
Short.io	1,000 branded links	No	Full (first 50k clicks)	5 domains	Yes	Yes	Branded links on free
Dub	25 / month	No	Yes (1k clicks, 30-day)	3 domains	Yes	Yes	Developers / attribution
Cuttly	30 / month	No	Deep (30-day retention)	1 domain	Yes	Limited	Free analytics depth
Bitly	5 / month	Yes (interstitial)	None	No	2 / month	Limited (1k req/mo)	Brand recognition
Rebrandly	10 / month	No	Basic (100 clicks)	1 (.bio format)	10/mo (watermark)	Limited	Branded .bio domain
is.gd	Unlimited basic	No	Opt-in basic	No	No	Basic	Truly free, no signup
Minily	5 (hard cap)	No	Global (top-3 countries, last 10 clicks)	No (Pro)	Unlimited	No API	Clean EU analytics, no ads

Figures verified May 2026. Free plans shift frequently — check each vendor's pricing page before signing up. Sources are linked in each tool's section below.

The 8 best free URL shorteners in 2026

There is no universal winner here, which is exactly why a table beats a ranking. Below, each tool gets the same treatment: who it is for, the free plan in real numbers, what it genuinely does well, and the one honest limit you should know before signing up.

TinyURL — best for fast, anonymous, no-signup links

TinyURL is the tool people reach for when they just need one clean link, right now, without creating an account. According to TinyURL's own breakdown of its free plan, you get URL shortening on the tinyurl.com domain, an automatically generated QR code for every link, link history, custom alias support, and — importantly — permanent redirects that never expire. Zapier describes it as free, fast, and anonymous, with no ads and no sign-up needed for basic shortening.

What makes TinyURL genuinely useful is the friction it removes. There is no onboarding, no email confirmation, no dashboard to learn. You paste a long URL, optionally type a custom ending, and copy the result. For a one-off link shared in a chat message or printed on a flyer, that workflow is hard to improve on, and because the redirects are permanent, you do not have to worry about the link silently dying a year later.

Honest limit: there is no analytics on the free plan, no link editing, and no custom domain — all three are Pro features, and paid plans start around $16/month. If you ever want to see who clicked, TinyURL's free tier will not show you a single number. That is the trade-off for its simplicity, and for many quick links it is the right one. (We maintain a side-by-side Minily vs. TinyURL comparison if you want the head-to-head detail.)

Short.io — best free plan for branded links plus analytics

Short.io is the tool that makes most "the free plan is dead" complaints sound exaggerated. Its free-forever plan includes 1,000 branded links, 50,000 tracked clicks per month, 5 custom domains, one user seat, QR codes, API access, and full analytics (geography, device, browser, referrer) for those first 50,000 clicks — with commercial use allowed. That is, by a wide margin, the most generous free allowance on this list. Zapier names it the best free option for good reason.

The practical upshot is that Short.io is the rare free shortener you can run a small business on without immediately bumping into a wall. 1,000 branded links covers a long-running content operation, and 50,000 tracked clicks a month is real traffic, not a teaser allowance. The API on free also means you can wire link creation into your own tools — something most free tiers reserve for paying customers.

Honest limit: the free tier caps you at one user and 50,000 tracked clicks per month; past that, analytics stop counting until you upgrade, and there is no second seat for a teammate. Paid plans run Hobby $5/mo, Pro $18/mo (unlimited links and clicks), Team $48/mo, and Enterprise $148/mo. For most individuals and small projects, though, the free plan is hard to beat — it is the one entry on this list where "free" still means what it used to.

Dub — best free plan for developers and modern attribution

Dub is the open-core, developer-leaning option, and it is the one to watch if you care about clean APIs and conversion-style analytics. Per Dub's analytics documentation and Zapier's roundup, the free plan gives you 25 new links per month, 1,000 tracked clicks/events per month, 3 custom domains, one user, 30-day analytics retention, QR codes, link tags, UTM templates, and API access — no credit card required. Location and device breakdowns are included.

Honest limit: here is the nuance to verify before you sign up. Dub's pricing page now foregrounds paid tiers (Business $75/mo, Advanced $250/mo, Enterprise custom) and no longer headlines the free tier. As of May 2026 the free plan still exists with the limits above — but it is clearly being de-emphasized, so confirm it is still on offer when you create your account.

Cuttly — best free plan for analytics depth

If your priority is rich click data on a free plan, Cuttly is a strong pick. According to Cuttly's own 2026 free-plan write-up, the free tier gives you 30 short links per month, one branded custom domain, QR codes, a link-in-bio page, one survey, and — notably — no ads on clicked links and no credit card required. The analytics are genuinely deep for a free product: total and unique clicks, a click timeline, device/OS/browser/brand breakdowns, referrer source, country-level geography, and 30-day retention.

Honest limit: 30 links per month and 30-day analytics retention will feel tight if you publish links at volume or need long-term historical data. Paid plans start at $12/month for higher limits and longer retention.

Bitly — the most recognized name, but the free plan is now thin

Bitly is the brand everyone knows, and that recognition has real value — a bit.ly link looks legitimate to recipients. But the free plan in 2026 is a shadow of its former self. Per Bitly's own blog, the free plan is now 5 short links per month, 2 QR codes per month, and 3 custom back-halves per month, with no click or scan analytics on free; links do not expire and clicks are unlimited, but you cannot change a destination after creating the link.

The bigger grievance is the ads. As Bitly's own support page confirms, free-tier links and QR codes now show an ad plus a preview page before redirecting — and this was applied retroactively to existing links. Coywolf dated the interstitial-ad rollout to February 2025. Zapier's verdict on the free plan is that it is "not really worth it."

Honest limit: 5 links a month, no analytics, and an ad page on every redirect. If brand recognition is your only requirement, Bitly still delivers that — otherwise the free tier is among the weakest here. We break down the trade-offs in detail in our Minily vs. Bitly comparison.

Rebrandly — best for a branded custom domain on free (with caveats)

Rebrandly is built around branded links, and even its free plan lets you put links on a custom domain — rare at this price (zero). Per Rebrandly's pricing page and cross-confirmed by Zapier, the free plan includes 10 branded links per month, 10 QR codes per month (watermarked), 1 custom domain in a yourbrand.bio format, 100 tracked clicks per month, and basic analytics. Zapier names Rebrandly its best all-around shortener.

Honest limit: 10 links and 100 tracked clicks per month is genuinely small, the free QR codes are watermarked, and you cannot edit a link's destination after creation on the free plan. Beyond the free tier, Rebrandly moves you to paid plans (Essentials, Professional, Growth, and a custom Enterprise tier) — check the current prices on Rebrandly's pricing page, as the published figures change periodically.

is.gd — best truly free, no-signup, no-ads minimalist

If you want the opposite of feature bloat, is.gd is it. Per the is.gd FAQ and its link-creation page, it is completely free with no registration required, supports custom short URLs and URLs up to 5,000 characters, offers optional stat-logging via a preview page, and runs with no ads. There is a basic API for automation.

Honest limit: "minimalist" is the whole point and the whole limit. Analytics are opt-in and basic, there are no QR codes, no custom domain, and no dashboard of branded links. If you need anything beyond a clean, anonymous, permanent short link, you will outgrow it quickly — but for that one job, nothing is simpler.

Minily — best free plan for clean EU analytics without ads

Now our own tool, judged by the same criteria. Minily is a URL shortener and QR code generator built in France and hosted in the EU. The free plan caps you at 5 links — and we mean a hard lifetime cap, not 5 per month, which is the same low end as Bitly and worth saying plainly. In exchange, the free plan is otherwise unusually complete: unlimited QR codes, password protection on links, global analytics (total clicks, top 3 countries, and your last 10 clicks), link expiration and scheduling, an opt-in preview page, geo and device conditional redirects, a built-in UTM builder, and CSV export of your aggregates. There are no ads on the redirect, ever, and the analytics export is GDPR-friendly (aggregates only, no personal data). Sign-in is via GitHub, Google, email, or passkeys.

Where Minily earns its spot is the specific combination of no ads + real global analytics + EU/GDPR hosting on a free plan. That is a different value than "most free links" (Short.io wins that) or "deepest free analytics" (Cuttly and Short.io go deeper). If you want a clean, ad-free link with honest, privacy-respecting numbers and you do not need many links, that niche is exactly Minily's.

Honest limits — stated plainly: only 5 free links is the lowest cap on this list alongside Bitly; tags, custom domains, full per-link analytics (cities, device, OS, referrer, all countries, unlimited clicks), and live mode all require Pro (€5/mo or €48/yr). Enterprise (€10/mo plus €2/seat) adds a team workspace and shared domains. And the things Minily simply does not have, so you do not assume otherwise: no public/REST API, no white-label, no multi-touch attribution, no predictive AI, no CRM integration. If those are dealbreakers, Short.io or Dub are the better fit, and we would rather tell you that than lose your trust later. (Unlimited free QR codes are available without an account on our QR generator, and password protection is free too.)

Free vs. paid: when "free" stops being enough

Every free plan has a ceiling, and the smart move is to know which ceiling you will hit first. These are the five most common triggers to upgrade — for any tool on this list, not just ours.

• You hit the link cap. The most obvious one. If you publish more than a handful of links a month, a 5-, 10-, or 25-link allowance disappears fast. Short.io's 1,000-link free tier is the main exception.
• You need per-link or per-campaign analytics. Global click totals are fine for a personal link; the moment you run multiple campaigns and need to compare them, you need granular, per-link data — usually a paid feature (it is on Minily, where Pro unlocks per-link and per-tag analytics).
• You need a custom domain. Branded links on your own domain signal trust and improve click-through. Short.io, Cuttly, and Rebrandly offer one or more on free; many others, Minily included, gate this behind a paid plan.
• You need to kill the ads. If you are on Bitly's free plan, the only way to remove the interstitial is to upgrade. With ad-free shorteners, this trigger never fires.
• You need a team. Shared workspaces, multiple seats, and team-wide analytics are universally paid features.

The honest takeaway: a free plan is the right starting point for almost everyone. Upgrade when a specific limit becomes a real cost to you — not before.

How to choose the best free URL shortener for you

Match the tool to the job. Here is the decision shortcut by use case.

• "I just need one quick, clean link." → is.gd or TinyURL. No account, no ads, permanent links. is.gd if you want the absolute minimum; TinyURL if you want a custom alias and an auto QR code.
• "I want branded links on a free plan." → Short.io (1,000 branded links, 5 domains) or Rebrandly (a single .bio domain, 10 links/mo). Short.io is the more generous of the two by far.
• "I want real analytics without ads, hosted in the EU." → Cuttly for the deepest free analytics, or Minily for clean global analytics with GDPR-friendly export and EU hosting on a no-ads redirect.
• "I'm a developer who wants an API." → Dub or Short.io — both include API access on the free plan. Note plainly: Minily has no public API, so it is the wrong choice here.
• "I just want a recognizable bit.ly-style link and nothing else." → Bitly — but accept the 5-link cap and the interstitial ad, or upgrade.

If you want deeper one-on-one breakdowns, our comparison hub at Minily vs. Bitly and Minily vs. TinyURL goes feature by feature.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best free URL shortener in 2026?

There is no single winner — it depends on what you need. For branded links plus full analytics on a generous free plan, Short.io is the standout. For quick, anonymous, no-signup links, is.gd or TinyURL. For clean analytics without ads, Cuttly (deepest) or Minily (EU-hosted, GDPR-friendly). Pick the tool whose free limits match your actual use, not the one with the loudest marketing.

Which free URL shorteners have no ads?

TinyURL, Short.io, Cuttly, Dub, is.gd, and Minily all redirect cleanly with no ads. The notable exception is Bitly: since February 2025, its free-plan links and QR codes show an interstitial ad and preview page before redirecting, applied even to older links.

Do free URL shorteners give you analytics?

Some do, many don't. Short.io (full analytics for the first 50k clicks), Dub (1,000 clicks, 30-day retention), Cuttly (deep breakdowns, 30-day retention), and Minily (global clicks, top 3 countries, last 10 clicks) all include analytics on free, at varying depth. TinyURL's and Bitly's free plans include no click analytics at all.

Is there a free URL shortener with a custom domain?

Yes. On their free plans, Short.io offers up to 5 custom domains, Cuttly offers 1, and Rebrandly offers 1 in a yourbrand.bio format. Note that some tools, including Minily, require a paid plan for custom domains — check the relevant section above.

Are free URL shorteners safe, and do the links expire?

Reputable shorteners use HTTPS and permanent links — TinyURL and Bitly links, for example, do not expire. The main risk is using a no-name shortener that could go offline and break every link you created. Stick to established providers, and if a tool offers link expiration as an opt-in feature (Minily does), that is a control, not a default.

Why did Bitly's free plan get worse?

Bitly's free plan is now 5 links per month with no analytics and an interstitial ad on redirects. This reflects an industry-wide tightening of free tiers that Zapier attributes to spam abuse and a shift toward business analytics — it is not unique to Bitly, though Bitly's ad page makes it the most visible example.

Is there a free URL shortener with an API?

Yes — Short.io and Dub both include API access on their free plans, which makes them the developer-friendly picks. Rebrandly and TinyURL offer limited API access. To be clear: Minily has no public API on any plan, so if programmatic link creation is a requirement, choose Short.io or Dub.

What's the catch with "unlimited free" shorteners?

Usually that "unlimited links" does not mean "unlimited features." The trade-off is often no analytics, no link editing, no custom domain, or monetized/ad-laden redirects. is.gd is a clean exception — genuinely unlimited and ad-free — precisely because it offers very little beyond the core shortening. Read the free-plan fine print, not just the headline.

Conclusion

There is no single "best" free URL shortener in 2026 — and any listicle that gives you one without asking what you need is selling you something. Match the criteria to your use: Short.io for the most generous free branded-link allowance, is.gd or TinyURL for instant anonymous links, Cuttly or Dub for free analytics depth, Rebrandly for a branded .bio domain, and Minily if you want a clean, ad-free, EU-hosted link with honest global analytics and do not need a high link volume or an API. Bitly remains the most recognized name, but its free plan — 5 links and an ad page — is the one to think twice about.

Whatever you pick, do one thing before you sign up: open the vendor's pricing page and re-check the free-plan limits yourself. These plans change month to month, the numbers here were verified in May 2026, and the only thing worse than a thin free tier is finding out about it after you have built your links on it.