Free URL Shortener & QR Code Tools

Yes. Every tool here — the shortener, QR generator, scanner, UTM builder, encoder, and parser — is free with no account, no sign-up, and no usage cap.

No. There's no login and nothing to register. Open the page and every tool is ready to use immediately.

Yes. The layout, tool tabs, and FAQ are all built to work on a phone screen, including the QR camera scanner on devices that support camera access from the browser.

Any modern browser — Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, and their mobile equivalents. A few features, like camera scanning, need a browser that supports the relevant Web API, which all current versions of these do.

Once the page has loaded, the shortener, QR generator, UTM builder, encoder, and parser all run entirely in your browser and don't need a connection. The QR scanner's file-upload mode also works offline; live camera scanning just needs camera permission, not internet.

Not currently. Linkforge is a page you interact with directly — there's no API endpoint for scripting these operations from another system.

Shortened links, QR codes, campaign tags, and raw URLs come up together constantly in real marketing and ops work, so it's faster to have them on one page than to hop between separate sites for each step.

A few do, deliberately — for example, a shortened link can be turned into a QR code with one click, and a UTM-tagged URL can be sent straight to the QR generator. Nothing is shared beyond what you explicitly send from one tool to another.

It generates a short code and saves the mapping between that code and your original URL in your browser's local storage. When the short link is opened in that same browser, the page reads the code from the address and redirects to the original URL.

Only if they open it in the same browser on the same device where it was created — the mapping lives in that browser's local storage, not on a server. For links you need to share with other people, treat this as a way to organize and label your own links rather than a public redirect service.

Linkforge is a self-contained page with no backend server, so it can't permanently host redirects the way a service like Bitly does. The shortener here is a genuinely working client-side tool, built honestly around that constraint rather than pretending to be something it isn't.

Clearing your browser's site data, cache, or local storage removes every short link you've created, since that's the only place they're stored. Export your links first if you want to keep a backup.

Yes. There's a custom alias field — type a code you'd prefer, and the tool uses it as long as it isn't already taken in your local link list.

Yes. Every link in your list has a delete option, and you can always create a new one with the same alias once the old one is removed.

It counts visits that happen in the same browser where the link was created, since that's the only place it can observe activity. It has no visibility into clicks from other devices or browsers.

Yes. Use the export option to download your link list as a file, then use import on the other device or browser to load it back in.

No hard limit is enforced, but browsers cap how much local storage a single site can use, so an extremely large list (thousands of links) could eventually hit that ceiling.

It's well suited to personal link organization — cleaning up long tracking URLs for your own notes, testing what a QR code built from a shortened link looks like, or keeping a tidy list of links you use often on one device.

Website links, plain text, email addresses, phone numbers, SMS messages, Wi-Fi network credentials, and contact cards (vCard) — pick a type from the selector and the form changes to match it.

No. A QR code just encodes data directly — there's no server behind it that could expire or go offline. As long as the underlying information (like a website address) stays valid, the code will keep working indefinitely.

Yes. There are separate color pickers for the foreground (the dark modules) and background, plus a live preview so you can check the result stays scannable before downloading.

Low, Medium, Quartile, and High trade code density for damage tolerance — higher levels can still scan correctly even if part of the code is smudged, covered, or has a logo placed over it, but they make the pattern denser.

Yes, there's an option to upload an image that gets placed in the center. Use a higher error correction level when you do this, since the logo covers part of the encoded data.

PNG and SVG. PNG is a fixed-resolution image good for most uses; SVG is a scalable vector file that stays sharp at any print size, which is worth using for anything going on a poster, sign, or product package.

Low contrast between the foreground and background color is the most common cause — scanners need a clear difference between the two to distinguish the modules. Keep the background notably lighter than the foreground, or preview-scan the result before printing it anywhere.

QR codes can hold up to a few thousand characters depending on the content type, but very long text produces a dense, harder-to-scan pattern. Shortening the underlying link first, or trimming the text, keeps the code easy to read.

Yes — a small, dense code printed too small can be unreadable by phone cameras. As a rule of thumb, a QR code should be printed at least an inch across for anything meant to be scanned from a short distance.

Yes, any of those are just URLs, so the URL type in the generator handles them the same way it handles any other website link.

It encodes your network name, password, and security type into a special format that phone cameras recognize automatically — scanning it prompts the phone to join the network without anyone having to type the password.

No. It's encoded directly into the QR image in your browser and never leaves your device or gets saved — treat the resulting QR code itself as sensitive, the same way you'd treat the password, since anyone who scans it can join your network.

Whatever you fill in — name, phone number, email, company, and job title are all optional fields, and only the ones you complete get included in the generated contact card.

Their phone recognizes it as contact information and offers to save it directly to their contacts app, rather than opening a browser.

The phone number type opens the dialer with the number pre-filled, ready to call. The SMS type opens the messaging app with both the number and an optional pre-written message ready to send.

Yes. Along with the recipient address, there are optional subject and body fields — scanning the code opens the phone's mail app with all three already filled in.

The URL type — point it at the page you want people to land on. Keep the link itself short if possible, since shorter data makes for a cleaner, more scannable code.

No — each type has its own set of fields, so switching types resets the form to avoid mixing unrelated data together.

The best check is scanning it yourself with your own phone's camera right after generating it, which shows you exactly what the person you share it with will see.

It takes a list of URLs or text values, one per line, and generates a separate QR code for each one in a single pass, rather than making them one at a time.

After generating, a Download All button packages every code as an individual PNG file inside a single ZIP archive.

Yes — pairing each line with a name using a comma (name, value) names the downloaded file after it; without a name, files are numbered in order.

There's no fixed cap, but very large batches (several hundred codes) take noticeably longer to render and zip since everything happens in your browser rather than on a server.

Yes, the color, size, and error correction settings you choose apply to the whole batch, so every code in the set shares the same look.

Common cases include generating a unique QR code per product, per event ticket, per table at a venue, or per asset in an inventory list, where making each one by hand would be tedious.

Bulk mode is built for plain text and URLs, one per line, since those cover the common batch use cases. For Wi-Fi or contact card codes, use the single QR Code Generator tool instead.

Either upload a photo or screenshot containing a QR code, or use the live camera option if your device has a camera and your browser allows the page to access it.

No. The decoding happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript — the uploaded image or camera frame is never uploaded or transmitted anywhere.

Camera access requires the page to be loaded securely (HTTPS) and requires you to grant permission when your browser prompts for it. If you've previously denied that permission, you'll need to reset it in your browser's site settings.

The decoded link is shown as text along with an Open button, so you can read it before deciding to visit it — this is deliberate, since QR codes can point anywhere and it's worth checking a link before opening it.

Common causes are a blurry or low-resolution photo, a code that's cropped or partially cut off, or heavy glare on a printed code. Try a clearer, well-lit photo with the whole code visible.

Yes — a screenshot works the same as a photograph as long as the QR code itself is clearly visible and not scaled down so small that the pattern becomes blurry.

It can often still decode a code with minor damage, thanks to the error correction built into the QR format itself, but a code with a large obscured area or missing corner is usually unreadable.

The scanner is built to find and decode a single QR code per image. If a photo contains more than one, crop it down to just the one you want read.

UTM parameters are small tags appended to a URL — source, medium, campaign, and a couple of optional others — that analytics tools like Google Analytics use to tell you where your traffic actually came from.

Source, medium, and campaign name are the three that most analytics platforms expect; term and content are optional and mainly useful for paid search keywords or A/B-testing different versions of the same ad.

Something like source "newsletter" and medium "email" is a common, readable convention — the exact wording matters less than being consistent every time you tag a link from that channel.

Yes — it appends the UTM parameters with the correct separator whether your base URL already has a question mark and existing parameters or not.

Yes — once the tagged URL is built, a Generate QR button sends it straight to the QR Code Generator without needing to copy and paste it manually.

No. They're purely informational tags read by analytics tools; the link still goes to exactly the same page and loads at the same speed as it would without them.

Generally yes for the campaign itself — keep the campaign name consistent (like "spring_sale") while varying the source and medium per channel (email vs. social vs. paid search), so you can compare channels within one campaign in your analytics.

Most analytics platforms treat them as case-sensitive, meaning "Email" and "email" could be logged as two different sources. Sticking to one consistent case, usually lowercase, avoids fragmenting your data.

It converts characters that aren't safe in a URL — spaces, ampersands, accented letters, and others — into a percent-sign format that can travel through a web address without being misread.

Common cases are building a link with special characters in a query parameter, debugging why a link isn't working as expected, or reading a URL that's come back full of %-encoded characters so you can see what it actually says.

Component encoding escapes everything unsafe, including characters like / and &, and is meant for encoding a single value that will be placed inside a URL. Full URL encoding leaves those structural characters alone, since it's meant for encoding an entire address at once.

This usually means the input contains a percent sign not followed by a valid two-digit code, which happens when text was double-encoded, truncated, or wasn't URL-encoded to begin with.

Yes, the tool handles Unicode text correctly, so encoding and decoding round-trip cleanly for accented letters, non-Latin scripts, and emoji.

No. Encoding is just a reversible format conversion — anyone can decode it back to the original text instantly. It's not meant to hide or protect information, only to make it URL-safe.

It breaks a URL down into its parts — protocol, domain, port, path, every query parameter individually, and the fragment (the part after a #) — so you can see exactly what a long or unfamiliar link is actually doing.

It's a quick way to check where a shortened or unfamiliar link actually leads, review what tracking parameters a link is carrying, or debug a URL that isn't working the way you expect before you share it.

It shows you the structure clearly — including the real domain, which is often hidden behind a long path or subdomain — but it doesn't check reputation or scan for malicious content. Use it to see what a link says, not as a security scanner.

Yes, every parameter is broken out into its own row in a table, which makes it much easier to read than a single long, cluttered query string.

The parser lets you know it couldn't be read as a valid URL rather than guessing at a result, since showing an incorrect breakdown would be worse than showing nothing.

Yes, the protocol is shown as one of the parsed fields, so you can confirm at a glance whether a link is secured with HTTPS or using plain HTTP.

No content you paste — URLs, text, contact details, Wi-Fi passwords — is uploaded or sent to a server. Everything is generated and processed directly in your browser.

In your browser's local storage, which is a small amount of storage tied to this specific site on this specific browser. It isn't synced anywhere and isn't visible to Linkforge or anyone else.

No. The image is read and decoded locally by JavaScript running in your browser; it's never transmitted over the network.

No. Camera frames are analyzed locally in real time and are never recorded, saved, or sent off your device.

The tools themselves don't set tracking cookies. Local storage is used only to save the short links and settings you create yourself, not to track your behavior.

No — a QR code you generate exists only as an image in your browser until you download or share it yourself. Nothing is published or made public automatically.

Anything in an input field or output box is cleared immediately, since none of it is saved. Short links you've explicitly created are the exception — those persist in local storage until you delete them or clear your browser data.

Yes — a QR code is just an encoded copy of what you typed. Since Wi-Fi passwords and personal contact details go directly into the image, treat the resulting QR code with the same care you'd give the information itself.

It's useful for cleaning up long product or booking links before pasting them into your own notes, quotes, or internal documents where a tidy, memorable label matters more than a permanently hosted redirect.

Linking a physical flyer, table tent, or product label to a menu, order form, review page, or contact card — anywhere a customer would otherwise have to type a URL by hand.

By tagging each link consistently by source and medium, you can see in your analytics tool exactly how much traffic (and, downstream, how many conversions) each channel or campaign actually drove, rather than guessing.

Yes, that's a common use — printing a Wi-Fi QR code at a café, office, or waiting room lets guests join the network with one scan instead of typing a password.

Printing it on a business card, booth sign, or email signature lets someone save your contact details to their phone in one scan, without typing anything by hand.

Anywhere you need a unique code per item — products in a catalog, seats or tickets at an event, or assets being tagged for inventory — bulk generation turns a job that would take hours into one pass.

Yes, for print materials it can make a code feel more trustworthy and on-brand, as long as you raise the error correction level and test that it still scans reliably before printing at volume.

No — they help you prepare clean, trackable links and codes, but the actual traffic and conversion reporting happens in whichever analytics tool (like Google Analytics) reads the UTM parameters you've added.

Check that you're opening it in the exact same browser where it was created, and that you haven't cleared your browser's site data since then — both will remove the local mapping the redirect depends on.

Most browsers require a normal, non-restricted page load for the copy button to work. If it silently fails, select the text manually in the output field and copy it with your keyboard shortcut instead.

PNG downloads are a fixed pixel size, so scaling one up for large printing can blur it. Use the SVG download for anything printed larger than a few inches, since it stays sharp at any size.

This usually means the page isn't loaded over HTTPS, camera permission was previously denied, or another application is already using the camera. Check your browser's site permissions and try again.

The on-screen preview scales to fit your screen, but the actual downloaded file always uses the pixel size you set in the size option, regardless of what device you're viewing it on.

Make sure the file being imported is one that was exported from Linkforge itself — importing an unrelated file, or one that's been edited and is no longer valid, will be rejected rather than partially applied.

Yes, but keep in mind that local storage in private mode is typically cleared as soon as you close that window, so any short links created there won't persist for later use.

QR codes encode data directly, so more characters require more modules to represent them. Shortening the underlying link first, using the URL Shortener, produces a simpler, easier-to-scan code.