A link shortener takes a long, ugly web address and hands you a short one that goes to the same place. That is the whole trick, and for years that was the whole product. Not anymore. The good ones now track every click, put your own name on the link, build QR codes, and in one brand-new case, write the tracking tags for you after a two-sentence conversation.
I’m Damon Nelson. I have built marketing software for more than twenty years, and I have watched a lot of shorteners come and go. This is the current field, in plain English, with what each one is good for, what it costs as of this writing, and the catch.
What a shortener actually does for you
Five things, and the first one is the least important.
- Saves space. A short link fits in a tweet, a text message, or a printed flyer without eating the whole line.
- Looks cleaner. A long address stuffed with tracking codes looks like spam. A short one looks like you meant it.
- Builds trust. People click a short link on a name they recognize, especially one on your own domain.
- Counts the clicks. Every decent tool tells you how many people clicked, from where, and on what device. The better ones follow the click all the way to a sale.
- Stays memorable. You can give the link a custom ending, like yourbrand.link/guide, so it works out loud on a podcast or a stage.
Four words to know before you pick one
UTM parameters are the little tags on the end of a link, like utm_source=facebook, that tell Google Analytics where a visitor came from. They are the difference between “we got traffic” and “the Tuesday email worked.” A custom domain, also called a branded link, means the short link carries your name instead of the tool’s. An API is a door that lets other software use the tool without a person clicking buttons. MCP, short for Model Context Protocol, is the newer plug that lets AI assistants like Claude use a tool directly, as if they had their own login.
Now the list.
1. TinyURL: the quick one-off
No account, no setup, paste a link and get a short one that never expires. You can customize the ending. Make an account and you get custom domains and basic click tracking, though the tracking is thin. Best for: the link you need right now and will never think about again. Price: free for 30 links a month, paid plans from about $11 a month.
2. Bitly: the famous one
Bitly is the name most people know, and it has grown into a tool built for big teams: branded links, QR codes with your logo, UTM links, sixty-plus integrations, and an AI assistant you can ask about your click data. The catch: the free plan is tiny, and the good features, including your own domain, live on the higher tiers. Best for: larger businesses with volume and budget. Price: five free links a month, a limited $10 plan on annual billing, and custom domains from about $35 a month.
3. Short.io: free branded links
If you want your own domain on your links without paying, this is the standout. The free plan takes up to five custom domains and a thousand branded links, with separate stats for each domain, plus QR codes and a UTM builder. Best for: anyone juggling more than one brand or website on a budget. Price: free as described, paid from about $5 a month.
4. Rebrandly: branding with editable destinations
Rebrandly made its name on branded links and lets you customize every part of the address. The feature I like most: you can change where a link points after you have shared it, so a dead page does not strand every link you ever posted. It also redirects visitors by location, language, or device. Best for: brand-conscious teams that want control after the link is out. Price: ten branded links a month free, paid from about $9 a month.
5. Dub: links that follow the sale
Dub tracks clicks, then leads, then sales from the same short link, so you can see which post actually made money. It can send phone users one way and desktop users another, and you can rewrite the preview title and image a link shows when it is shared. Best for: people who want to know what a click was worth, not just that it happened. Price: 25 free links a month, paid from about $30 a month.
6. Buffer: shortening inside your scheduler
If you already schedule social posts in Buffer, it will shorten every link as you draft, add UTM tags automatically, and show the clicks in its own analytics. Connect a Bitly account and the links carry your domain. Best for: people who never want to open a separate shortener. Price: the built-in shortener is on the free plan; the Bitly connection needs a paid plan from about $6 a month per channel.
7. Replug: links that build an ad audience
Replug adds a retargeting pixel to your short links. A pixel is a bit of code that quietly notes who clicked, so you can show those people an ad later. It also overlays a call-to-action on the destination page and split-tests destinations. Best for: anyone running paid ads who wants every click to feed the audience. Price: a free plan with 100 links, paid from about $19 a month.
8. Sniply: your button on someone else’s page
Share an article from any website, and Sniply floats your own small call-to-action on top of it: a button, a form, an image, or a line of text. You get credit for sharing good content and a path back to your site at the same time. Best for: curators and newsletter writers who share a lot of other people’s work. Price: no free plan, a 14-day trial, then from about $9 a month.
9. Nimble Links: one link, many destinations
Built for testers. One short link can split traffic between two landing pages, send people to different places by location or language, or change its destination by time of day or click count. Best for: marketers who want to run experiments without rebuilding links. Price: a tiny free plan for trying it out, paid from about $29 a month.
10. Zapier’s URL Shortener: links made by a trigger
Zapier is the automation service that connects thousands of apps, and it has a shortener step built in. Publish a blog post and a short link appears in your spreadsheet, your email, or your social queue without you touching it. The catch: doing anything useful with the link takes a multi-step automation, which means a paid Zapier plan. Best for: people whose links should create themselves. Price: paid Zapier plans from about $30 a month.
11. Link Squeeze: links tied to revenue
Made for online stores. It connects clicks to actual sales, adds retargeting pixels for Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest, and builds links that drop a shopper straight into a cart, a checkout, or a discount. Best for: ecommerce brands that want to know which post sold what. Price: a 7-day trial, then from about $10 a month.
12. SnipIt: free for Shopify
A free Shopify app that imports every page in your store and turns each product, collection, or variant into a short link with one click. It can hand the shortening to Bitly or TinyURL if you prefer. Best for: Shopify stores that want tidy product links for free. Price: free.
13. T.LY: the shortest links in the business
Everything about T.LY is built around length. The domain is three characters and the endings stay tiny. Underneath you get smart redirects by device and location, bio pages, trackable QR codes, an API, and a browser extension that makes a link from your toolbar. Best for: creators and developers who want short links without the bloat. Price: free browser extension, paid from about $10 a month.
14. LinkMasher: the one you talk to (and yes, it’s mine)
Full disclosure: this one is mine, and it exists because I was tired of typing tracking tags by hand and getting one of them wrong every single time. LinkMasher is a smart AI shortener. You tell it in plain words where the link is going, something like “this goes in a LinkedIn post about the spring launch on Thursday,” and it figures out the UTM parameters, keeps them consistent with every link you have made before, and hands back the tagged link plus a short one.
The other thing it does that almost nobody else does: it was built so your AI agents can use it. It has an MCP connection, which means a Claude assistant or any MCP-ready agent can ask for a tracked link while it is writing your post, without a person opening a dashboard. If you are starting to run agents for your marketing, that matters more every month. Best for: anyone who has ever mistyped utm_source, and anyone letting AI help with their marketing. Price: Solo is $12 a month, or $9 a month paid yearly, with one branded short domain. Team is $27 a month, or $19 a month paid yearly, with ten seats and five branded domains. The MCP connection ships with both. No free plan, seven-day refund. Details at linkmasher.com.
How to pick
- One link, right now: TinyURL.
- Your own domain for free: Short.io.
- Branding with an edit button: Rebrandly.
- Follow the click to the sale: Dub, or Link Squeeze if you run a store.
- Feed your ad audience: Replug.
- Never leave your scheduler: Buffer.
- Let AI and agents make the links: LinkMasher.
Whichever one you choose, do two things on day one. Put your own domain on it if the plan allows, and decide your tagging rules before the first link goes out. A shortener that cannot tell you where the click came from is a prettier version of the problem you started with.
One note on where this came from. The original list of thirteen was built from Buffer’s roundup of the best URL shorteners, which goes deeper on each tool’s features and screens. LinkMasher is the addition, and the opinions are mine.
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