About the URL Shortener
The URL Shortener turns any long URL into a short toolspow.com/s/xxx link that's easier to share in chat, SMS, print, or a QR code. It's deliberately minimal — paste, click, copy. No signup required for basic use; signed-in users can pick their own slug for branded links.
All new links get a random 6-character base62 slug (56 billion combinations — collisions are effectively impossible). A total click counter increments on each visit, but we deliberately don't record per-click details (IP, device, referrer, location). If you need full analytics, use a dedicated shortener like Bitly.
How it works
- Paste your long URL. If you forget the
https://, we add it for you. - (Optional, signed in) Type a custom slug — 3-64 characters, letters/digits/hyphen/underscore.
- Click Shorten URL. Copy the result.
- When someone visits the short link, we do a 302 redirect to the original destination and bump the click counter.
Safety & abuse prevention
- Only http:// and https:// destinations — no
javascript:,data:,file:, or other schemes. - No private / internal IPs — we won't shorten to
localhost,10.x,192.168.x, or any host that resolves to a private range. - No chain-shortening — we refuse links that already point at bit.ly, tinyurl, t.co, and other shorteners (creates endless-redirect abuse potential).
- Rate limits — anonymous IPs are capped at a small number of shortenings per hour to prevent spam. Sign in for higher limits.
- Slug collision retry — random slugs are retried until unique.
- Reserved slugs — words like
admin,api,loginare blocked from custom slugs to prevent phishing.
Privacy
We store the destination URL, slug, click counter, and the SHA-256 hash of the creator's IP (for per-IP rate limiting — not the raw IP). No cookies are set on visitors of short links. No third-party analytics are called on the redirect path.
Need more than this?
This is the simple tool. If you need full click analytics (country / device / referrer breakdown), password-protected links, expiry rules, A/B split testing, geo-targeting, or API access, those features are planned as a separate app. For now, use a dedicated service like Bitly or short.io for that level of control.