20 Really Short URL Shorteners

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Because every character counts on services such as Twitter, the URL shortener websites play a big role, but what would make it even better is using a URL shortener site that has itself a really short URL.

And in the sea of all the services offering to shrink your long URLs, it is hard to spot the ones that would make the difference needed to save characters.

Therefore, we have compiled a list of the URL shortener websites that have a URL not bigger than 7 characters, including the TLD and the DOT.

1. tr.im


tr.im

2. is.gd

3. ow.ly

4. zi.ma

5. nn.nf

6. rt.tc

7. sn.vc

8. bit.ly

9. cli.gs

10. lnk.in

11. pnt.me

12. url.ie

13. yep.it

14. 23o.net

15. fly2.ws

16. ne1.net

17. nsfw.in

18. tiny.cc

19. w3t.org

20. www.x.se

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50 Comments

  1. Steve
    March 4th, 2009 at 8:27 am

    Nice list! I personally like to use is.gd, mainly because it has a nice little Firefox extension.

  2. Celine
    March 4th, 2009 at 8:37 am

    Exactly what I was looking for, thank you!

  3. montana flynn
    March 4th, 2009 at 3:04 pm

    excellent, i use tr.im and love it! I switched from cli.gs to tr.im and so fa it much nicer to use.

  4. Danny
    March 4th, 2009 at 3:05 pm

    Hi there is also Go2 at http://go2.vg You can create custom URLs as well!

  5. Ramon
    March 4th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

    Check out http://www.migre.me, it’s a brazilian URL Shortener, that let you count visits of your links and retweets on twitter.com.

  6. Webmasterish
    March 4th, 2009 at 4:12 pm

    @Steve @Celine @Montana Thanx guys!

  7. Leora
    March 4th, 2009 at 4:22 pm

    Nice list. I would be interested in hearing more about the different services, especially if they can provide good statistics. I have been using the budurl service (the free version), and I get a little bit of stats from that one. cli.gs looks promising.

  8. Nile
    March 4th, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    A few of those were possible with my PHPurl script that I give away for free. Also, my site re-url.me is a short URL site.

  9. Webmasterish
    March 4th, 2009 at 4:57 pm

    Hi Leora,

    Thanks for mentioning that, we’ll be doing that soon.

  10. Webmasterish
    March 4th, 2009 at 5:11 pm

    Hi Nile,

    I like the design of your site, it’s neat and the colors are classy.

  11. Daily Links | AndySowards.com :: Professional Web Design, Development, Programming, Hacks, Downloads, Math and being a Web 2.0 Hipster?
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  12. Brent
    March 6th, 2009 at 9:04 am

    You missed my site:

    http://shw.me – A smarter URL shortener. Open a shw.me link from a phone and quickly see the slimmed-down mobile version. Open a shw.me link from a computer to see the full site.

  13. WilhelmR
    March 7th, 2009 at 9:56 am

    I’ve been using bit.ly lately because it’s integrated into Twhirl, and let’s you track the clicks.

    But whenever i need to shorten something for a friend or anything other than twitter i go with the cute option: http://www.moourl.com 🙂

  14. SEO Expert
    March 10th, 2009 at 9:52 am

    Nice list. You missed this one http://clockurl.com

    It offers time sensitive URL redirection.

  15. Never Not | The Web Laureate
    March 14th, 2009 at 11:58 pm

    […] Would be, And eventually, URL after URL after URL, Many, Shortened, Yet one more, One more, After another more, Would lead to, Would come to, A conclusion, The only one […]

  16. Alex Schleber
    March 22nd, 2009 at 11:50 pm

    You can add this http://3on.us/why-diy-tinyurl solution using a WordPress Theme hack to the list, plus you’ll own it & all of your stats yourself.

    If you find a suitable 3 character .us or similar domain, you will be able to create link extensions as short as 1 or 2 characters (obviously there will be a limited amount of those) vs. the usual 3-4 minimum, plus this will accept even on-the-fly shortened versions of your longer extensions, as long as there are no earlier duplicates – more at the above post.

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  18. steve
    March 31st, 2009 at 2:55 am

    ziprl.com is a good site for short urls

  19. is.gd URL Shortener for Firefox, 1 Click & You’re Done! « stuff i found
    April 3rd, 2009 at 9:58 am

    […] are a plethora of URL shortening services out there, but as a Firefox user I find this one extremely handy.  is.gd offers an add-on for […]

  20. d0g.me
    April 8th, 2009 at 10:12 am

    Check out d0g.me. Our dog shortens your urls 😉

  21. David
    April 13th, 2009 at 7:28 pm

    I use ur.ly myself.

  22. Naeem
    April 20th, 2009 at 11:38 am

    http://ulike.info/ is also good one

  23. URL Shortener
    April 29th, 2009 at 1:58 am

    Another URL shortener with tag function:
    http://w3tag.com

  24. Matt
    May 10th, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    I’d like to recommend urlShort, which is both a service and an open source project. My goal with urlShort is to make it the best free and open source URL shortener, which can be used in a lot of ways whether it is Twitter, email, browsers, or anything else. Information is at http://u.mavrev.com/pro

  25. Nancy Jentra
    May 25th, 2009 at 6:44 pm

    Threely is the shortest URL shortener out there: http://3.ly

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  27. Rashaud Teague
    June 25th, 2009 at 2:55 am

    You missed Real Short URL http://rsurl.us/

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    June 30th, 2009 at 10:23 am

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  29. TwitterPan
    July 6th, 2009 at 11:39 am

    And http://TwitterPan.com/ “the URLs which wouldn’t grow up” 🙂

  30. admin at my site
    July 28th, 2009 at 1:30 pm

    yeah you missed su.pr and true tr.im is the best

  31. gon
    August 25th, 2009 at 3:04 pm

    This site is alright as well: http://zud.me very short

  32. Garret
    September 19th, 2009 at 4:07 pm

    http://sova.in is what I’ve been using.

  33. getafree.tk
    November 23rd, 2009 at 4:30 pm

    umm…
    You ALL missed the shortest free redirector OF ALL TIME:

    .tk !

    http://getafree.tk

  34. getafree tk
    November 23rd, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    best

    ever:

    .tk

    free

    here

    getafree.tk

  35. dubfan
    February 24th, 2010 at 3:45 pm

    http://k.vu is another one, it just started up so it’s giving out really short URLs.

  36. Jeff Paulson
    March 20th, 2010 at 8:23 am

    Great List, I use http://urls.co.za as it tweets my short urls once I make one so that it increases my vists.

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  38. john
    June 1st, 2010 at 10:42 pm

    Check it out! http://www.webURL.Me

  39. hermes kelly bag
    July 9th, 2010 at 1:10 am

    Check out http://www.migre.me, it’s a brazilian URL Shortener, that let you count visits of your links and retweets on twitter.com.

  40. Enzo
    August 27th, 2010 at 3:59 pm

    Twig rocks. http://twig.mx I use that one all of the time now. Simple, fast and no ads.

  41. MK Foo
    September 14th, 2010 at 4:32 pm

    Triviurl.com is new and is spitting out short links. No ads on there, and has the links-bar feature.

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  43. SkipSoft
    February 11th, 2011 at 8:44 am

    You miss one. http://ygn.me

  44. tinytum
    February 15th, 2011 at 10:32 am

    missed this url shortening service that is easy to remember and keeps unique visitor count http://ddp.net

  45. Drew
    March 18th, 2011 at 8:11 pm

    My own service, 4np.us has been up for years now, but nobody has noticed. The URLs are 16 characters total length right now. Check it out! http://4np.us/ (If you want to link to this article, you can use http://4np.us/Dh ;))

  46. kamil
    July 28th, 2011 at 5:36 am

    You forgot about goo.gl!!!

  47. Anthony
    May 15th, 2012 at 7:14 pm

    yi.tl just launched: http://yi.tl

    yi.tl is the first URL shortener to offer support for category tags. This unique service allows users to group related URLs and easily retrieve old links. To save time, the site will even make tag suggestions based on the URL being shortened.

    Other features:
    – All links checked against Google’s Malware & Phishing databases
    – Detailed Preview pages
    – Full click through stats
    – QR codes provided for every URL
    – 19 character URLs (shorter than bit.ly and Tinyurl)
    – Reliable dedicated server
    – SEO-friendly 301 redirects

  48. url shortener
    January 3rd, 2013 at 12:47 am

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