I have previously posted a roundup of 20 Really Short URL Shorteners, but now I feel the need to list the shortest URL shorteners out there, or at least the ones I know about. Basically, the shortest domain name possible is one that is made up of 3 letters and a dot; the first character could be a letter, number, or a Unicode character followed by the dot and the 2 letters of ccTLD (country code top-level domain).
Finding such a short domain name is not easy, even though there are more than 250 ccTLDs to choose from, and many domain lookup services to help you achieve that such as domai.nr. For that reason, and to set them apart from the many similar services, I bring you this roundup of the shortest URL shorteners, hoping their existence will be contrary to their characters length.
1. 3.ly
3. r.im
4. u.nu
5. x.vu
6. z.pe
Related Roundups
- 20 Really Short URL Shorteners
- 15 Domain Lookup Sites That Do It as You Type
- 10 Online Clipboards for Easy Text Sharing
Helpful Articles and Resources
- Country code top-level domain – From Wikipedia
- List of ccTLDs – From IANA
- VisiBone Country Chart an interesting map of internet country codes. (via Jacopo Farina)
- How To Easily Create Your Own URL Shortener With WordPress – by Rae Hoffman of Outspoken Media
- PHPurl a free and simple script in case you want to create your own URL shortening service – by Nile Flores of Blondish.net
- Shorten URL – a useful Firefox Add-on currently supporting 100 URL shortening services by LouCypher whom I thank for bringing to my attention a couple of the shortest URL shorteners I didn’t know about.
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32 Comments ( Add Yours )
Timo Reitnauer
June 10th, 2009 at 1:06 am
Wow – that’s really short
Usually you can’t get 1-character domains through domain registrars but only at the registry directly. Registering a 2-character domain shouldn’t be a problem though. There are still many available, check out the following lists:
Short & brandable domain names
100 available ultra short domain names
matija « koornk
June 10th, 2009 at 4:02 am
[...] the shortest URL shorteners -> singlefu..rteners/ today, 11:02 from koornk strawberries pikchur… yesterday, 21:34 from Pikchur [...]
Igor
June 10th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Great post, but I know about an other short url engine, inurl.ws it´s realy cool, easy to use and clean. Thanks
Phaoloo
June 10th, 2009 at 9:32 am
haha, wish to see b.l or a.g
atom
June 10th, 2009 at 11:48 am
another de-shortener: http://wheresitgo.com/
Marc
June 10th, 2009 at 11:58 am
I like http://tynyfy.net pretty much since it allows to choose one of three TLD’s, an individualized “path” and a direct interface to Twitter for shortened URL’s
Rick
June 10th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
I’ve been using r.im for awhile now, hasn’t let me down so far although at times the service can come to a crawl
Matthew
June 10th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Note that by using Unicode in the *suffix* (as well as the domain), tinyarro.ws actually gets even shorter than most of these services and will stay short for each prefix for millions and millions of uses.
Patricia Weber
June 10th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
There’s even shorter ones, check out: http://txtn.us
It uses special characters to guarantee just 6 characters in the URL, like this:
http://❽.ws/❤
Seems pretty cool. They also have tools to reduce text using ligature replacements, to fit more into the 140 limits. It’s beta but I’ve noticed it’s getting better.
Casey
June 10th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
I use Threely ( http://3.ly ) and it is really great… they have a bookmarklet and a ‘Threely Preview’ to see where a 3.ly url goes to. Also they have a built in hit counter. They also say that user accounts are coming soon for link tracking, looking forward to this! It’s the ultimate shortener, nothing beats it – especially when Tweeting! It deserves to be number one on this list
Casey
Tom Glenn
June 11th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
You missed off http://tdy.me
haqu
June 11th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
After trying to use several popular URL shorteners, I decided to make my own. It is fast and clean, with simple stats — http://go2.st
Feel free to suggest new features and improvements (twitter: @haqu)
Josh
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:54 am
Those are really short! However, I prefer to use “.com” sites. Does anyone know what the shortest “.com” site is? I use http://1url.com which is pretty short, but maybe there’s another one out there?
Viktorijag
July 20th, 2009 at 5:53 am
I have recently discovered this URL shortening service – http://www.urloo.com
Check out yourselves.
marty
July 21st, 2009 at 9:26 pm
hi, check out http://l.pr it lets you put a comment in the link itself!
VW
July 31st, 2009 at 12:55 am
I prefer http://is.gd – not the shortest domain name, but main page is clean, not cluttered and loads fast.
Twitter Trackbacks for The Shortest URL Shorteners | SingleFunction [singlefunction.com] on Topsy.com
August 30th, 2009 at 6:28 am
[...] The Shortest URL Shorteners | SingleFunction singlefunction.com/the-shortest-url-shorteners – view page – cached I have previously posted a roundup of 20 Really Short URL Shorteners, but now I feel the need to list the shortest URL shorteners out there, or at least the ones I know about. — From the page [...]
Andrej
September 21st, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Hi, I have a running list of three-letter URL shorteners here: http://asalko.blogspot.com/2009/09/shortest-3-letter-url-shorteners.html
At the moment, it stands at nine.
hetzge
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:42 am
Hei
Very usefull 
Thanks for the list
kolorowanki
November 7th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Wow interesting, Good job Webmasterish.
sitopren
November 13th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Another three-letter url shorteners, which enable you to change redirection afterwards and shorten your url to yoursite.x.xx instead of x.xx/yoursite, are the French provider c.la (other alternative domains are a bit longer) and the German one subdomain.de, which has a huge list of domains, among which the shortest ones are 2.ag, 2.je, 4.je, 6.je, 7.je, 8.je, 9.je, m.vu and x.gg
Mike
November 24th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
http://smaller.in – These guys have been around for a long time. Nothing fancy, but a cool preview / stats page, and they show you all the previous shortened links (except the ones that are private of course)
http://smaller.in
Best Url Shortener
November 27th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
personally i’m using http://kxk.me and http://tr,im
exile
December 6th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
I found very useful url shortener with very detailed statistics (GEO, google maps etc.) http://smal.ly
Corey
December 9th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
URL Shortener http://Ohurl.com I have created, check it out if you want.
sal
February 6th, 2010 at 5:40 am
This article is a bit old but the shortest URL shortner at the moment is http://to./
dubfan
February 24th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
http://k.vu is another one, it just started up so it’s giving out really short URLs.
memest
March 9th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
http://go.af is one of the shortest shortener URL in the world.
Yves
April 25th, 2010 at 9:48 pm
Here is another new simple but unique URL shortener http://trii.us with hits tracking.
uk38
June 11th, 2010 at 1:18 am
Try My Url Shortener !
http://yyuq.com
http://uk38.com
Possibility to use your own custom keyword ex ( yyuq.com/lawyers , uk38.com/youtube … )
track the visitor of your link with acurate country stats .
hope you like it
jtmg
June 19th, 2010 at 12:48 am
what about 0.mk ?
Michael
June 28th, 2010 at 2:49 am
I know the shortest one. Ever.
http://to./
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