cat /etc/motd
a small, fast, honest URL shortener.
The big shorteners kept moving basic things behind paywalls — custom slugs, analytics, even editing a link after you made it. kurl.click started as a weekend project to prove a shortener with all of that could run entirely on edge infrastructure for roughly the cost of a domain name. It stuck around because it turned out to be genuinely nice to use.
No ads, no tracking pixels sold to third parties, no login walls in front of the redirect. A link you shorten here just... redirects. Fast.
traceroute kurl.click/your-slug
The whole round trip usually lands under ~50ms — the lookup happens in the same building your request arrives at. Analytics writes never block the redirect.
| kurl.click | Bitly (free) | TinyURL (free) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Custom slugs | yes | paid | yes |
| Click analytics | yes | limited | paid |
| Edit destination later | yes | paid | paid |
| Bulk shorten | yes | paid | no |
| QR codes | yes | yes | yes |
| Ads / upsells | none | some | some |
| Sells your click data | no | it's the business | probably |
Feature sets as of mid-2026; the paid tiers of those services do more. This isn't trying to replace them for marketing teams — it's trying to be the shortener you'd actually want for your own links.
uname -a
Everything runs on Cloudflare's edge network — there is no origin server to slow down or fall over.
Analytics are aggregate counters, not per-visitor logs — we count that a click happened and roughly where from, never who you are. No cookies on redirects, no fingerprinting.
git log --reverse | head
kurl.click was originally inspired by 4ev-link/4ev.link (CC0). What started there took on a life of its own — new dashboard, terminal theme, analytics engine, API keys, bulk tools, and a light switch that has feelings.
The sauce will be shared soon. The plan is to open the repo once the codebase gets a security once-over and the docs stop being lies. Watch this space — or the footer.