URL Shortener

Server assisted New Web Utilities

Paste a long address, choose how long the link should live and get a short link of the form www.mutqansoft.sa/s/K7mQx2p that answers with a plain HTTP 302 redirect. Short links belong to your free account: you can keep up to 100 live links, see how often each one was followed, and delete any of them at any time. The destination is checked once, when the link is made, and nothing about the people who click is stored beyond a counter and the time of the last click.

Privacy: Short links are stored on the Mutqan backend — the destination URL, the account that created it, its creation and expiry dates and a click count — until they expire. No visitor addresses or user agents are recorded.

How does a short link work, and how can you see where it leads without opening it?

A short link is a short URL on a shortener's domain whose server answers with an HTTP redirect — a 3xx status and a Location header naming the long address — which the browser follows on its own. Permanent redirects (301, 308) may be cached, temporary ones (302, 303, 307) are asked again on every visit (RFC 9110). To see the destination without visiting it, request the short link with redirects turned off and read each Location header in turn, as the URL Expander does.

Security note: A short link hides its destination until it is opened, which is why phishing messages use them. Expand an unexpected short link first and check the final address before you open it or type anything into the page it leads to.

How to use URL Shortener

  1. Paste the full destination address, including https://, into Destination URL.
  2. Choose how long the link should work under Expires after — 180 days unless you change it.
  3. Press Create short link. If you are not signed in, sign in or create a free account in the dialog that opens; the link is made as soon as you are signed in.
  4. Copy the result from Your short link, or press Show my links to see, copy and delete all of your live links.

URL Shortener features

  • Short links on this site's own domain — www.mutqansoft.sa/s/ followed by a seven-character code — that answer with a plain HTTP 302 redirect
  • A lifetime of 7, 30, 90, 180 or 365 days, chosen when the link is made; an expired link stops at once and its record is deleted within about an hour
  • All your live links in one list: destination, clicks, last click, creation and expiry dates and status, with Copy and Delete buttons
  • The destination is checked once, at creation: absolute http(s) only, no private, local or internal hosts, no links to other short links, and URLs with stacked phishing or malware signs refused
  • Codes drawn from 57 letters and digits that are hard to confuse (no 0, O, 1, l or I), so a link read aloud or typed from print still works
  • Click counting without tracking: one counter and the time of the last click, nothing about the visitor
  • Sign in without leaving the page: the free-account dialog opens in place and your URL stays in the box

Inputs and outputs

Inputs

  • Destination URL — an absolute http:// or https:// address on a public host, up to 2,048 characters, with no user name or password in it.
  • Expires after — 7, 30, 90, 180 (the default) or 365 days.
  • Your sign-in — creating, listing and deleting links need a free account; signing in happens in a dialog on this page.

Outputs

  • Your short link — the short URL, the destination as stored and the expiry date, with a button that copies the short link.
  • My short links — every live link of your account, newest first, with its destination, clicks, last click, creation and expiry dates and status, and Copy and Delete buttons.
  • Messages — why a destination was refused, when the hourly or the 100-link limit is reached, and from what time you can create links again.

URL Shortener example

Shortening a campaign link for a printed flyer

Input:

Destination URL: https://www.example.com/spring-sale/offers?utm_source=flyer&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=spring-2026
Expires after: 30 days

Output:

Short link: https://www.mutqansoft.sa/s/K7mQx2p
Destination: https://www.example.com/spring-sale/offers?utm_source=flyer&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=spring-2026
Expires: 13 Nov 2026
My short links — 1 of 100 live links: Clicks 0 · Last click: Not yet · Status: Active

How to read the URL Shortener results

Clicks counts every request that followed the short link, including link previews in chat apps, e-mail security scanners and crawlers. It is a rough sense of traffic, not a count of people.

"Not yet" under Last click means the link has not been followed since it was made.

Status "Active" means the link redirects. "Disabled by an administrator" means it was stopped after a report: it now answers with a "page not found" page, and you can delete it.

The expiry date is the moment the link stops working; after it the link leaves your list.

A refused destination says why: a private, local or internal host or an unusual port, a loop to another short link, or a URL the URL-safety heuristics scored as dangerous.

When to use URL Shortener

  • Putting a long campaign address with UTM parameters on a printed flyer, a slide or in an SMS, where every character counts.
  • Giving testers a short link to a build or a test environment that should stop working after the test cycle.
  • Sharing a link in a chat where the full address would wrap across lines or be cut off.
  • Making a short address to put in a QR code, which keeps the code small and quick to scan.

Troubleshooting

  • "Sign in to create short links" after the dialog closed — the dialog was dismissed before signing in. Press Create short link again; your URL is still in the box.
  • "The URL is not valid" — add the scheme (https://) and remove any user name or password written before an @ sign.
  • "This destination cannot be shortened" — the host is private, local or internal, uses an unusual port, or is a workers.dev address. Use the page's public address.
  • "You already have 100 live short links" — delete links you no longer need under Show my links; each deletion frees a place at once.
  • "You can make up to 30 attempts per hour to create short links" — refused destinations count as attempts too. Wait until the time the message shows, then try again.
  • A short link opens a "page not found" page — it expired, was deleted, or was disabled after a report. Check its status under Show my links.

Frequently asked questions about URL Shortener

Why do I need an account to create short links?

Every short link redirects from this site's own domain, so each one has an owner who can list and delete it, and a reported link can be traced to an account. The account is free, and signing in happens in a dialog on this page, so the URL you typed stays in the box.

How long does a short link keep working?

For the lifetime you choose when you create it: 7, 30, 90, 180 (the default) or 365 days. After that the link answers with the site's "page not found" page and its record is deleted within about an hour. A lifetime cannot be extended; create a new link instead.

What is recorded when someone clicks my link?

A counter goes up by one and the time of the latest click is kept. No IP address, browser, referrer, country or per-click record is stored. During a burst of traffic the counter can undercount, because counting is capped per minute; the redirect itself still works.

Which destinations are refused?

Anything that is not an absolute http:// or https:// address, addresses with a user name or password in them, private, local, reserved and internal hosts, unusual ports, workers.dev hosts, other short links on this site, and URLs that the site's URL-safety heuristics score as dangerous (several strong phishing or malware signs together). The check runs once, when the link is created.

Can I choose the code or change the destination later?

No. Codes are seven random characters drawn from 57 letters and digits that are hard to confuse (no 0, O, 1, l or I), and a link always points at the address it was created with. To change it, delete the link and create a new one.

How many short links can I have?

Up to 100 live links per account, and up to 30 attempts per hour to create new ones; an attempt with a destination that is refused counts too. Deleting a link frees its place at once, and expired links stop counting automatically.

Does a short link on this site mean the destination is safe?

No. A short link is not a safety endorsement: the check when a link is made refuses only private, local or reserved hosts and URLs that show several strong phishing or malware signs together, so a URL with a single warning sign is accepted, and Mutqan does not vouch for any destination. When a short link reaches you from someone you do not know, expand it with the URL Expander and check the final address with the URL Safety Checker before you open it.

Technical notes

The redirect is an HTTP 302 Found with a Location header (RFC 9110, section 15.4.3). It is sent with Cache-Control: no-store, so a link you delete, or one that expires, stops on the next click instead of living on in a browser cache; with X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow, so search engines do not index the codes; and with Referrer-Policy: no-referrer, so the browser sends the destination no Referer header for that hop.

A destination must be an absolute http or https URL (RFC 3986) of at most 2,048 characters once the WHATWG URL parser has normalised it. The normalised form is what is stored: an internationalised domain is kept in its xn-- form and a space becomes %20.

A code is seven characters drawn with crypto.getRandomValues from an alphabet of 57 symbols, using rejection sampling so that every symbol is equally likely — about 1.95 × 10^12 possible codes. Codes are random, not secret: anyone who has a short link can find out where it goes.

Each account may make 30 creation attempts per hour and keep 100 live links. The hourly budget is charged before the destination is checked, so a refused destination uses up an attempt as well. The click counter is one integer per link, raised by the same database statement that checks the link is still live; the number of counted clicks per minute is capped, so a very busy link can undercount while its redirect keeps working.

Limitations and methodology

Short links answer with a temporary 302 redirect, so search engines keep the short address apart from the destination. A short link does not replace a permanent 301 redirect on your own server when a page moves.

A link cannot be edited, renamed or extended: its code is random and its destination fixed. Delete it and make a new one.

The destination is checked once, when the link is made. If that page later changes hands or content, the short link still leads to it.

A short link on this site is not a safety endorsement. The check refuses only URLs that show several strong phishing or malware signs together; a URL with a single warning sign is accepted, and Mutqan does not vouch for any destination. Expand and check a short link you do not know before you open it.

Click counts include automated requests and can undercount during bursts; they are not analytics.

Links live on this site's domain only; custom domains are not available.

Security and privacy

This is the only tool of the Internet Tools group that stores anything. For each link the Mutqan backend keeps the destination URL, the account that made it, the creation and expiry dates, a click counter and the time of the last click — until the link expires (its record is then removed within about an hour) or you delete it. Deleting your account deletes its links.

Nothing about the people who follow a link is recorded: no IP address, browser, referrer, country or per-click entry. The redirect does not pass a Referer header on to the destination.

A short code is random, not secret: anyone who has the link can see where it leads. Do not shorten addresses that carry private tokens, passwords or personal data.

References

  • RFC 9110: HTTP SemanticsIETF · 2022The meaning of HTTP methods, header fields, status codes and content negotiation, independent of the wire version.
  • Redirections in HTTP — MDNMDN Web Docs (Mozilla)HTTP redirects: 3xx status codes with a Location header, permanent (301, 308) versus temporary (302, 303, 307), and how redirect loops arise.
  • Fetch StandardWHATWGDefines CORS: preflight requests, the Access-Control-* headers and which responses a browser may expose to a page.