Best self-hosted url shorteners
[URL shortening](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening) is the action of shortening a [URL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Locator) to make it substantially shorter and still direct to the required page. Before hosting one, please see [disadvantages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening#Disadvantages) of URL shorteners.
We track 11 self-hosted url shorteners projects. The median health score in this category is 57, against 2 projects rated healthy or better and 2 showing little recent activity. The table below is ordered by health score, not popularity — the most starred project in a category is frequently not the best maintained one.
| # | Project | Health | Activity | Stars | Built with | Last release |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | YOURLS YOURLS is a set of PHP scripts that will allow you to run Your Own URL Shortener. Features include password protection, | Healthy · 70 | 12k | PHP | 30 Aug 2026 | |
| 2 | Chhoto URL Simple, lightning-fast URL shortener with no bloat (fork of simply-shorten). | Healthy · 68 | 976 | Rust, Docker | 23 Sept 2026 | |
| 3 | Shlink URL shortener with REST API and command line interface. Includes official progressive web application and docker images. | Steady · 67 | 5.3k | PHP, Docker | 21 Sept 2026 | |
| 4 | snowshare File and link sharing platform with URL shortening, code snippet sharing, and file uploads, featuring customizable expir | Steady · 57 | 87 | Nodejs, Docker | 25 Sept 2026 | |
| 5 | Kutt Modern URL shortener with support for custom domains and custom URLs. | Steady · 56 | 11k | Nodejs, Docker | 5 Jul 2026 | |
| 6 | bit Fast, lightweight, resource-efficient, compiled URL shortener. | Slowing · 48 | 107 | Docker, Crystal | 7 Aug 2026 | |
| 7 | Flare A nonbloated, modern, and highly configurable file/screenshot vault server with support for ShareX, Flameshot, and Spect | At risk · 24 | 137 | Docker, Nodejs | 6 Jul 2025 | |
| 8 | Simple-URL-Shortener KISS URL shortener, public or private (with account). Minimalist and lightweight. No dependencies. | At risk · 2 | 60 | PHP | 9 May 2015 | |
| 9 | clink A super-minimal link shortening service written in pure C, focusing on small executable size, portability, and ease of c | Unrated | — | C | — | |
| 10 | Flink Create QR Codes, embeddable link previews for your website and crawls/scrapes metadata. | Unrated | — | Docker | — | |
| 11 | rs-short Lightweight link shortener written in Rust, with features such as caching, spambot protection and phishing detection. | Unrated | — | Rust | — |
Which one should you run?
If you want the safest bet on longevity, YOURLS is the best-maintained project in this category right now at 70/100. Chhoto URL is the closest runner-up (68/100) — see the side-by-side comparison.
A health score measures whether a project is alive and shipping. It does not measure whether it has the feature you need. Use it to rule options out, then compare on features.