Updated August 2026
    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    11k

    Kutt: Maintenance, Licence and Alternatives

    Modern URL shortener with support for custom domains and custom URLs.

    TL;DR • Kutt • as of August 2026

    Kutt is an open-source url shorteners project, with 11k GitHub stars and a health score of 56/100. It committed 18 times in the last twelve months across 5 of those months, and its status is actively maintained. Licence: MIT. It has real momentum, so treat it as a live competitor rather than a stale repository.

    11k
    GitHub stars
    56/100
    Health score
    18
    Commits (12 mo)
    5/12
    Active months

    Maintenance health

    Status Actively maintained — Committed within the last 45 days.
    Last commit 2026-07-05
    Days since last commit 43
    Commits, last 3 months 9
    Commits, last 12 months 18
    Months with activity 5 of 12
    Last release 2026-07-05
    Archived No
    Licence MIT
    Category URL Shorteners

    Health score combines commit recency, twelve-month commit volume, months with activity, release recency and archive state. Metadata refreshed August 2026.

    What the licence lets you do

    MIT

    Permissive (MIT, Apache, BSD): you can fork it, close the source and sell it. Lowest legal friction for a commercial product.

    This matters most when you plan to sell a hosted version. A permissive licence means anyone — including a competitor with more capital — can do the same, so your defensibility has to come from distribution, support or data, not from the code.

    What Kutt means for your idea

    Kutt is shipping code consistently, so a buyer comparing your product will find a maintained free option. Price and position against the total cost of self-hosting it, not against the paid incumbent's list price.

    The clearest opening in the dataset. Low open-source competition usually means either a genuinely underserved need or a market too small to attract volunteers — validate demand before assuming the former.

    Kutt: common questions

    Is Kutt still maintained in 2026?

    Actively maintained. Kutt recorded 18 commits over the last twelve months, with activity in 5 of those months and 9 commits in the last quarter. Last commit: 2026-07-05. Last release: 2026-07-05. Committed within the last 45 days.

    Can I use Kutt commercially?

    Kutt is published under MIT. Permissive (MIT, Apache, BSD): you can fork it, close the source and sell it. Lowest legal friction for a commercial product.

    How crowded is the URL Shorteners category?

    9 open-source implementations, 4 of them actively maintained, led by YOURLS at 12k stars. Saturation score 28/100 — Open. Thin or poorly maintained open-source coverage.

    Kutt alternatives in URL Shorteners

    YOURLS

    URL Shorteners

    12k

    YOURLS is a set of PHP scripts that will allow you to run Your Own URL Shortener. Features include password protection, URL customization, bookmarklets, statistics, API, plugins, jsonp.

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    MIT

    Shlink

    URL Shorteners

    5.2k

    URL shortener with REST API and command line interface. Includes official progressive web application and docker images.

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    MIT

    Chhoto URL

    URL Shorteners

    940

    Simple, lightning-fast URL shortener with no bloat (fork of simply-shorten).

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    MIT

    bit

    URL Shorteners

    105

    Fast, lightweight, resource-efficient, compiled URL shortener.

    Actively maintained
    MIT

    Simple-URL-Shortener

    URL Shorteners

    59

    KISS URL shortener, public or private (with account). Minimalist and lightweight. No dependencies.

    Abandoned
    MIT

    clink

    URL Shorteners

    A super-minimal link shortening service written in pure C, focusing on small executable size, portability, and ease of configuration.

    Not verified
    AGPL-3.0

    Competing with free? Check the market first.

    IdeaProof scores your idea against live competitors, market size and 1,000+ documented startup failures in about two minutes.