URL Shortener
Paste a long link and get a short, shareable one in a click. Free, no sign-up, no tracking.
Why shorten a URL?
Long URLs — especially ones full of tracking parameters — break awkwardly in emails, look untrustworthy in messages, and are impossible to read aloud or print. A short link fixes all three: it's compact enough for an SMS or a slide, easy to dictate over the phone, and doesn't wrap across lines in a document.
| Where short links help most | Why |
|---|---|
| SMS / messaging apps | Character limits and clean previews |
| Printed materials & slides | Someone has to type it by hand |
| Social media bios | Limited space, tidy appearance |
| Email newsletters | Long URLs often break when lines wrap |
| Spoken sharing (podcasts, video) | A six-character code is sayable; a 200-character URL isn't |
How it works
Your link is shortened through an established service — is.gd, with v.gd and TinyURL as fallbacks — and you get their short link back. Your URL is sent to that service to create the redirect, which is unavoidable: a short link cannot point anywhere unless someone stores the destination. That is the one place on CalcPerch where data leaves your browser, and it is set out in our privacy policy. We add no tracking of our own and do not count clicks.
Why not a calcperch.com/s/… link? We used to mint them on our own domain and have deliberately switched that off. A link shortener that anyone can call is an obvious target: scammers mass-produce redirects on it, the domain gets flagged by browsers as unsafe, and every page on the site goes down with it. Stopping that properly needs a bot check we have not finished building, and until then the honest thing is to let a service that already handles abuse at scale carry that risk on its own domain. Short links we issued earlier still work.
What shortening a link actually exposes
The section above says where your URL goes. This is what that means in practice, and it applies to every shortener rather than only this one:
- Whoever runs the shortener knows the destination. So do not shorten a link that is the secret — a private document URL, a password-reset link, a pre-signed download. Shortening does not hide an address; it copies it to someone else.
- Whoever runs it can see the traffic. Every click passes through their server before reaching yours. That is how click counting exists at all, and it is true whether or not anyone is looking.
- A short link is a pointer, and pointers can be re-aimed. The reader cannot see where it goes before clicking. That is exactly why spam filters treat shortened links with suspicion, and why a short link in a serious email often lands worse than the long one it replaced.
Link rot: two ways to break instead of one
A normal URL breaks when its page goes away. A short link has a second failure mode — the shortener can go away, and when a shortening service shuts down every link it ever issued dies on the same day. Unlike an ordinary dead link there is nothing left to search for, because the real address was never visible to the reader.
Which gives three rules worth following:
- Never put a short link on anything printed. A poster, a business card, a book, a conference slide. Paper outlives web services; print the real address, however ugly it is.
- Never let a short link be your only record. Keep the full URL somewhere as well. A list of short links with no originals is a list of future dead ends.
- Do use them where a link is read once and soon — a chat message, a URL you have to say out loud, a character-limited post, or a QR code that would otherwise need a denser grid to scan.
Links issued here come from is.gd and do not expire. The calcperch.com/s/… links minted before that switch remain valid for one year from the day they were created; nothing new is being added to that set.
Frequently asked questions
Do the short links expire?
No. Links created through is.gd stay active indefinitely at no cost — there is no account to lapse or renewal to remember. Older calcperch.com/s/… links we issued before switching remain valid for one year from the day they were created.
Is it really free? Any limits?
Completely free, no sign-up. The shortening service applies fair-use rate limits, so shortening a handful of links is fine; bulk automated shortening is not.
Can I choose a custom ending (vanity URL)?
Not in this tool — it generates the shortest available code automatically. For custom-branded links you'd need a paid service with your own domain.
Is my URL private?
Your URL is sent to the shortening service to create the redirect — that is inherent to how shortening works, and it is why this is the one tool on CalcPerch that isn't purely local. The service keeps the destination; we don't store it, log it, or count clicks. Read their policy for what they retain, and don't shorten links containing passwords or one-time secrets.
Why did my URL get rejected?
Only regular public http/https web addresses are accepted. Rejected: private and local addresses (localhost, raw IP addresses) and links that are already short links from another service. Chaining one short link through another only adds a redirect hop and is a pattern scammers rely on, so we don't allow it. If a legitimate link is rejected, try the original source URL without redirect wrappers.
Can I create links from a script?
No — this page only works from a browser. If you need programmatic shortening, use the shortening service's own API directly rather than going through us.