Short links on your own domain, traced to the sale
Dub shortens URLs on a brand's own domain and ties each click to the signups and sales it led to. The README calls it a link attribution platform, and a comparison page on its site bills it as "the #1 alternative to Bitly". It is a Next.js app written in TypeScript; Dub Technologies, the company behind it, runs the hosted version at dub.co.
Per-link targeting, split tests and deferred deep links
- Custom domains and QR codes: every short link lives on the brand's domain and gets a QR code automatically.
- Targeted redirects: one link sends visitors to different destinations depending on their country or device.
- A/B tests: variants of a link are compared on the clicks, signups or sales they bring in.
- Mobile deep links: on iOS and Android the link opens a specific screen in the app, and deferred deep linking still gets the user there after an install.
- Per-link controls: destination cloaking, expiry dates, password protection and custom previews on social networks.
- API, SDKs and webhooks: official SDKs for TypeScript, Go, Python, Ruby and PHP, plus webhooks fired in real time.
Links from code, app installs and campaign tests
- Generate a product's short links from its own back office through the API or one of the SDKs.
- Send a campaign's iOS and Android visitors to different destinations, then to the right screen once the app is installed.
- Keep a team's links in folders and tags, with reusable UTM templates.
- Choose between two versions of a campaign link on sales rather than clicks.
Tied to Vercel, with conversions under a commercial license
Self-hosting depends on four managed services. Dub's self-hosting guide names Vercel for hosting and Edge Middleware, PlanetScale for MySQL, Upstash for Redis and Tinybird for click analytics. The same guide says Docker is not supported and describes itself as "a starting point". Shlink, a self-hosted URL shortener, takes the other route: it ships an official Docker image under the MIT license.
Conversion tracking, named in the README's opening line, sits under a commercial license. Dub is open core: the README puts 99% of the code under AGPLv3 and the remaining 1% under a commercial license. That 1% lives in (ee) directories, and their README names Dub Conversions and SAML SSO with SCIM directory sync among the features kept there. The Bitly, Rebrandly and Short.io link importers are in there too. The commercial license covering the (ee) code allows it for development and testing but requires an Enterprise subscription in production.
The affiliate program left the public repository on October 26, 2026. The dub.co site sells Dub Partners, a platform for affiliate and referral programs, next to Dub Links. On that date the "Simplify Dub" pull request (#4783) deleted 2,546 files, more than a thousand of them partner-related, and the README was retitled "Dub Links". The repository now goes by dubinc/dub.link. Dub Partners is therefore only available in the hosted product.
There are no releases: the repository ships continuously from main. GitHub shows no release and no tag, and the latest commit is dated October 26, 2026. A self-hosted instance follows the main branch, with no version number to pin.