Questions, answered.

Yes — 100% free. There's no credit card requirement, no trial, no surprise paywall. You can shorten unlimited URLs without signing up. An optional free account adds click analytics, custom slugs, folders, tags, and a dashboard for managing your links. Paid plans (Pro from $8/month, Team from $24/month) exist for advanced features like branded QR codes, editable destinations, API access, and custom domains.

No. You can shorten any URL anonymously without signing up — paste it on the homepage and you'll get a short link and a QR code instantly. An account is only needed if you want analytics, custom slugs, or a dashboard to manage your links.

Yes — every short link comes with a free QR code, automatically. You can download it as a PNG immediately after shortening, no account needed. Pro users can customize their QR codes with colors, a logo, and export to SVG for print-quality scaling.

For free accounts: 6 months of click history with browser, referer, country, and device breakdowns. For Pro accounts: 2 years of history, plus an Activity log showing what's happened on your account (links created, deleted, destinations edited, etc.). All analytics are first-party — no cookies set on your visitors, no fingerprinting, no third-party trackers.

MicrLink is fully free for unlimited shortening with click analytics — Bitly's free tier limits the number of links and shows ads. MicrLink prioritizes privacy and never sells data; Bitly's parent company monetizes link data extensively. MicrLink's paid plans start at $8/month versus Bitly's $8/month for 100 branded links. We also include QR codes free by default; Bitly charges for them.

Yes. Links shortened on MicrLink don't expire by default. Pro users can optionally set an expiration date on a per-link basis. We don't delete short links because of inactivity. We do remove links that are flagged for malware, phishing, or abuse — those redirect to a safety warning instead.

Yes, free with an account. Custom slugs must be 2–40 characters using letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores. Slugs are first-come, first-served and unique across the system. Anonymous shortening uses a 6-character random code instead.

Yes, on Pro. Pro accounts can change the destination of an existing short link — useful for fixing typos, redirecting campaigns, or updating a link that's already been printed or shared. Every edit re-runs the same malware/phishing scan the homepage uses, and there's a 60-second-per-link cooldown to prevent abuse.

Yes, on Pro. The API supports creating links (POST), listing your links (GET), and fetching per-link analytics. Authentication uses API keys you generate from the dashboard. Rate limits are higher on Team and Enterprise plans.

Yes, on Pro. Pro supports up to 3 custom domains (e.g., go.yourbrand.com), Team allows 10, and Enterprise allows 50. Setup is a one-time DNS configuration.

Typically 30–80 ms from click to destination, depending on your network. We do one database lookup, log the click asynchronously, and serve the HTTP 302 redirect. No interstitial pages, no ads on the way through, no analytics scripts injected into your destination.

Yes. Every URL submitted to MicrLink is checked against Google Safe Browsing (which combines Google's database of unsafe sites with PhishTank's phishing database) and a maintained blocklist of other URL shorteners (to prevent chaining/laundering). If a URL fails either check, we refuse to shorten it. Pro users editing destinations get the same checks re-applied.

No. We don't sell your shortened-link data, your click analytics, or any account information. We don't share data with advertisers or data brokers. We don't train AI models on your links. The only third parties we share necessary technical data with are: our hosting provider (Render, for serving the site), our database provider (Supabase, for storing your data), our CDN (Cloudflare, for caching and DDoS protection), Google Safe Browsing (for URL safety screening), and MaxMind (for country lookup — IP only, never destination URL).

We commit to providing at least 90 days' notice and a data export of all your links and analytics if we ever shut down. Existing short links would continue resolving for the notice period.

Not currently, but we're considering it. If you're interested in self-hosting or contributing, get in touch.

Email abuse@micrl.ink with the short URL. We investigate every report and disable malicious links within 24 hours, usually faster. Repeat offenders are blocked at the account level.