The Shortest URL Shorteners

June 9th, 2009 by in Articles

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.ly

2. a.gd


a.gd

Note: A similar service would be a.nf.

3. r.im


r.im

4. u.nu


u.nu

5. x.vu


x.vu

6. z.pe


z.pe

7. tinyarro.ws


tinyarro.ws

Note: A similar use of Unicode is found at txtn.us URL shortening service.

Bonus – untiny.me

Untiny.me allows you to un-shorten or to get the original URL of a shortened one.


untiny.me

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55 Comments

  1. 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

  2. matija « koornk
    June 10th, 2009 at 4:02 am

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  3. 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

  4. Phaoloo
    June 10th, 2009 at 9:32 am

    haha, wish to see b.l or a.g 😀

  5. atom
    June 10th, 2009 at 11:48 am

    another de-shortener: http://wheresitgo.com/

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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

  11. Tom Glenn
    June 11th, 2009 at 3:08 pm

    You missed off http://tdy.me 🙂

  12. 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)

  13. 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?

  14. Viktorijag
    July 20th, 2009 at 5:53 am

    I have recently discovered this URL shortening service – http://www.urloo.com
    Check out yourselves.

  15. marty
    July 21st, 2009 at 9:26 pm

    hi, check out http://l.pr it lets you put a comment in the link itself!

  16. 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.

  17. 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 […]

  18. 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.

  19. hetzge
    October 2nd, 2009 at 8:42 am

    Hei
    Thanks for the list 😉 Very usefull 😉

  20. kolorowanki
    November 7th, 2009 at 5:44 pm

    Wow interesting, Good job Webmasterish.

  21. 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

  22. 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

  23. Best Url Shortener
    November 27th, 2009 at 2:18 pm

    personally i’m using http://kxk.me and http://tr,im

  24. 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

  25. Corey
    December 9th, 2009 at 12:56 pm

    URL Shortener http://Ohurl.com I have created, check it out if you want.

  26. 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./

  27. 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.

  28. memest
    March 9th, 2010 at 2:23 pm

    http://go.af is one of the shortest shortener URL in the world.

  29. Yves
    April 25th, 2010 at 9:48 pm

    Here is another new simple but unique URL shortener http://trii.us with hits tracking.

  30. 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

  31. jtmg
    June 19th, 2010 at 12:48 am

    what about 0.mk ?

  32. Michael
    June 28th, 2010 at 2:49 am

    I know the shortest one. Ever.
    http://to./

  33. Press Release Tips For Bands — We All Make Music
    September 13th, 2010 at 4:38 pm

    […] attention quickly, but past a certain point, things start to get lost. Assuming you need between 16 and 20 characters for a shortened link (to an album/artwork/tourdates/whatever), it gets very difficult to […]

  34. steroizi
    September 18th, 2010 at 6:07 pm

    wow 😀 this is very good tool indeed

  35. What to consider before shortening links | Bits
    October 26th, 2010 at 8:51 pm

    […] in this list — has been accompanied by a race to the bottom: who can generate the shortest URLs by creative use of domain name registration and by compressing URLs into as few characters as […]

  36. Top Twitter Tips for Musicians – Help, Lists & URL’s (part 4 of 5) | Make It In Music
    January 7th, 2011 at 6:31 pm

    […] You might also one day find the need for the shortest possible links and then you’ll need these two articles on the Single Function site – Really short URL shorteners and the Shortest URL shorteners. […]

  37. Edrick
    March 24th, 2011 at 9:41 pm

    I always use 3.ly, everyday. Today I used it again, and my shortened link redirected to this virus website, and so did all my other shortened ones. I check 3.ly and they were bought or something by this other gay URL Shortener. Then I checked all the URL shorteners here, and none of them work either…. so pissed.

  38. frenky
    May 7th, 2011 at 4:56 pm

    jGMrhf http://gdjI3b7VaWpU1m0dGpvjRrcu9Fk.com

  39. Energy Pundit » Blog Archive » A Greener Way to Shorten
    May 12th, 2011 at 3:02 am

    […] I could just switch to one of several even shorter url shorteners, like r.im… except tha one seems to be down. Maybe goo.gl… at least they can keep a website […]

  40. Naresh
    May 18th, 2011 at 6:51 am

    This http://bit.ly is shortest url

  41. Vib
    July 17th, 2011 at 2:02 am

    I just made a new one, http://Vib.tw

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  43. hugh williams
    August 22nd, 2011 at 3:16 am

    shorter url are great

  44. David Jones
    March 7th, 2012 at 6:23 am

    I often use http://short.nr for my url shortening.

  45. Anthony
    May 14th, 2012 at 10:04 am

    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.

  46. wholesale2012jerseys
    May 28th, 2012 at 4:51 am

    In fact I have never heard about this information. Thanks sharing!

  47. Kirt
    June 6th, 2012 at 2:39 am

    Linky Gaga http://l.gg is what I use. It’s based on YOURLS, so works great with WordPress, and also features Digg-Style voting for all users and visitors.

  48. Alex
    July 11th, 2012 at 6:53 am

    Best one for me is http://qoon.com
    Pays for proxy traffic and very easy to use

  49. Joanne
    September 28th, 2012 at 11:09 am

    Gгeat artіcle.

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  55. ankur
    March 22nd, 2013 at 11:56 am

    i always keeps on looking short domains ! nice article