Kutt

Kutt is an open-source URL shortener with over 10,000 GitHub stars, built as a modern self-hosted alternative to commercial link-shortening services. It gives developers and businesses full control over their branded short links, click analytics, and user access — running entirely on their own infrastructure with no per-click fees or third-party data sharing.

Common Use Cases

Marketing teams use Kutt to create campaign-specific short links on their own domain, tracking click-through rates without sending data to third-party analytics providers. Developers integrate Kutt's REST API into CI/CD pipelines, documentation systems, and internal tooling to generate short links programmatically. Businesses use password-protected links to share time-sensitive content with specific audiences, and set expiration dates to automatically disable links after a campaign ends. IT teams deploy Kutt to centrally manage redirect URLs across the organisation, keeping all link data on-premise and auditable.

Key Features

• Custom domain support — serve short links from your own branded domain
• Per-link analytics — track clicks, referrers, countries, and devices per link
• Password protection — gate any link behind a user-supplied password
• Link expiration — set an automatic expiry date on any shortened URL
• REST API — create, manage, and delete links programmatically
• Browser extensions — shorten links directly from Chrome or Firefox
• User management — admin panel to manage accounts and all links system-wide
• OIDC authentication — integrate with existing SSO providers
• Redis caching — optional Redis layer for improved performance at scale
• Registration controls — disable public sign-up to keep your instance private

Why deploy Kutt on Hostinger VPS

Running Kutt on a Hostinger VPS means your link data, click analytics, and user accounts never leave your infrastructure. You get full control over access policies — disable public registration, restrict link creation to authenticated users only, and serve short links from your own custom domain. The VPS environment gives Kutt consistent uptime and low redirect latency, since every millisecond of redirect delay is visible to end users. As link volume grows, you can scale the VPS vertically or tune the Redis cache without any plan changes or per-click costs.