A free URL shortener with analytics should do two jobs: make a long link short enough to share, and tell you what happened after you shared it. That means clicks over time, where people were, what they used, and when they came, without a cookie banner and without a paywall in front of the numbers. AriaQR's shortener at aqr.li does both for free, with a sign-in by email code and a few honest limits we spell out below.
What should a free URL shortener with analytics show you?
A click count on its own is a start, not an answer. The questions people actually ask about a shared link are more specific: did the newsletter outperform the Instagram post, did anyone outside the city click, are most people on phones, and when is the best time to post again. A link shortener with analytics worth using answers those from one screen.
Look for these, at minimum:
- Clicks over time. Per day, so you can see the spike after a post and how fast it fades.
- Unique visitors. Total clicks count the same person twice. Uniques tell you how many people you reached.
- Place. Country and city, from the visitor's network. Treat it as a market, not an address.
- Device and browser. Phone or desktop, iPhone or Android, and whether the link opened inside an app such as Instagram or WhatsApp.
- Busiest hours. In the visitor's own local time, not yours, or the heatmap lies for any audience in another time zone.
- Export. A CSV of every click, so the data is yours to keep and chart elsewhere.
- Bots filtered out. Chat apps and social networks fetch a link to build a preview card. Those fetches are not people and should not be counted as clicks.
If a free plan shows only a running total, it is a counter, not analytics. For the full picture of what each number means, our guide to how to track link clicks walks through UTM tags, short-link analytics, and page analytics side by side.
What do free link shorteners usually leave out?
"Free" covers a wide range. Before you put a short link on anything that lasts, check these:
- Expiry. Some free links live forever, some expire quietly, some stop after a set number of clicks. A link printed on a flyer needs to outlive the flyer.
- Ads or interstitials. Some free shorteners show an ad page or a countdown before the destination. That costs you clicks and trust.
- Analytics behind a paywall. A common pattern is free links with paid analytics. If tracking is the point, check that the free plan includes it.
- Anonymous links. No-signup shorteners are convenient, and they are also where scammers go. A short domain full of phishing gets blocked by mail filters and chat apps, and your clean links go down with it.
- Editing. Whether you can change where a link points after you share it, and whether that is free.
- Custom names. A readable ending such as /summer instead of random letters.
There is no single right answer, but there is a right answer for your use. A one-off link in a chat needs none of this. A link on printed packaging needs most of it. For a fair look at how the well-known services handle these trade-offs, see our roundup of Bitly alternatives.
How does the aqr.li shortener work?
Open the URL shortener, paste a long link, and you get an address like aqr.li/k7Pq2x that you can share anywhere. Sign in with an email code or Google first. There is no password to make and no card to add.
Every link has a real account behind it. That is a deliberate choice: anonymous links are the first thing spammers reach for, and keeping them off aqr.li is what keeps the domain trusted by the apps your links get shared in. Every destination is also checked against Google Safe Browsing when the link is made and re-checked over time, links to other shorteners and to IP addresses are refused, and anyone can report a link. Our post on whether short links are safe covers what that means for the people who click.
When someone opens the link, the visit is counted and they go straight to your page. There is no ad page and no countdown on the way.
What do the click analytics show?
Each link gets its own dashboard:
- Clicks over time and unique visitors, counted without cookies on the visitor.
- Countries and cities from the visitor's network, on a map.
- Devices, operating systems, and browsers.
- In-app browsers, so you can see how many people opened the link inside Instagram, WhatsApp, or similar apps.
- How people got there: a plain link click, a QR code scan, or inside an app.
- The busiest hours of the week, in each visitor's local time.
- Languages, and a CSV export of every click.
Link previews from chat apps are not counted, so a link pasted into a busy group chat does not inflate the total before anyone has tapped it. If you also run Google Analytics on your site, a switch in the link's settings adds UTM tags on the way through, so the same visits show up there as coming from the short link.
What are the limits on the free plan?
Plain terms, so nothing surprises you later:
| Free | Paid plans and Business | |
|---|---|---|
| Short links | Up to 10 per account | Far more |
| How long a link lives | A year, renewable free with one click | No end date |
| Click analytics | Full dashboard and CSV export | Full dashboard and CSV export |
| Change the destination | No, it keeps the address it was made with | Yes, any time |
| Custom names (aqr.li/summer) | Yes | Yes |
| Safety checks | Every link | Every link |
| QR code from the link | Yes, one click | Yes, one click |
Two of those limits are worth explaining. Free links keep their destination so that a link someone already trusts cannot quietly start pointing somewhere else. And the one-year term exists so abandoned links do not pile up: we email you 30, 7, and 1 day before the year ends, with a one-click renewal. If nobody renews, the link pauses and shows a notice instead of redirecting. It can still be brought back for 30 days, and then it is deleted.
For more links, no end date, and editable destinations, see pricing.
Can a free URL shortener give you a custom name?
Yes, on aqr.li custom names are free. A link like aqr.li/summer is easier to read aloud, easier to type from a poster, and looks less like spam in a message. If you are putting the link on air, on a slide, or anywhere people have to type it by hand, the custom name is worth it.
For links that people tap rather than type, such as a link in a bio, a newsletter, or a chat, a short random code works just as well, and the analytics are identical.
When should a short link become a QR code?
When it leaves the screen. A short link is the right tool for anywhere people can tap. On a poster, a menu, a box, or a business card, nobody types even a short address. They scan.
From the shortener, one click makes a free classic QR code for the same destination, with scan analytics of its own, as a PNG or an SVG. Or make an art code, where your photo, logo, or illustration becomes the code itself, verified on real decoders under real-world conditions before you download it. If you only need a plain code, the free QR code generator makes one with a dynamic link and analytics. For more free, in-browser utilities, browse the AriaQR tools.
Built a landing page in AriaQR? It gets an aqr.li address of its own, so the page and its short link come as a pair.
Where to start
Open the URL shortener, sign in with an email code, and shorten the link you are about to share. Post it in one place first, then check the dashboard the next day: clicks per day, where people were, and which hour they came. Make a second link for the next channel instead of reusing the first, so the two can be compared. When the link needs to go on paper, make the QR code from the shortener in one click.