Track Clicks on Any URL

What a click tracker actually records

Turn any URL into a short link and zip1.io starts counting the moment someone clicks it. For every link you get:

• Total clicks & unique visitors — unique count is deduplicated by IP
• Country — where each click came from
• Referrer — the page, post, or app that sent the click
• Browser & operating system — desktop vs mobile at a glance
• Time of the last click, and whether the click was a bot or a human

What it does not do: set a cookie, run a script on the destination, ask the visitor's name, or build a cross-site profile. It counts clicks on the link — nothing more.

Create a tracked link in five seconds

Via the web form: paste your URL and click Shorten. Tracking is on by default — there's no setting to enable.

Via the API (no key required, 10 requests/min per IP):

curl -X POST http://zip1.io/api/create \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com/landing-page", "alias": "spring-promo"}'

# Response:
# {"short_url": "http://zip1.io/spring-promo", ...}

Share http://zip1.io/spring-promo instead of the raw URL. Every click on it is now counted, and the destination still loads exactly as before via a 302 redirect.

See the numbers live

Open http://zip1.io/stats/<slug> for any link — no login — to watch clicks come in with the full country / referrer / browser / OS breakdown. The page keeps working for the life of the link, so you can check a campaign days or months later.

Prefer it in code? Fetch http://zip1.io/api/stats/<slug> for the same numbers as JSON.

Export the raw click data

Every tracked link exports to four formats — no paid tier, no row cap:

http://zip1.io/export/<slug>/csv     # spreadsheets
http://zip1.io/export/<slug>/json    # scripts & dashboards
http://zip1.io/export/<slug>/xlsx    # Excel
http://zip1.io/export/<slug>/xml     # legacy / BI imports

Drop the CSV into a spreadsheet for a client report, or pull the JSON into your own dashboard on a schedule.

No cookies, no consent banner

Because clicks are counted server-side when the short link redirects, there is no cookie on the visitor's browser and no analytics JavaScript on the destination page. Nothing to install, nothing to add to your site, and no third-party tracker riding along. It's the lightweight way to answer "did anyone actually click this?" without standing up a full analytics stack.

Three ways people use it

zip1.io vs bit.ly vs Google Analytics

Comparison reflects publicly documented free-tier features at time of writing. Google Analytics is built for on-site behaviour via a JavaScript tag on a page you control; zip1.io counts clicks on the link itself, so it works even for a bare link shared by email, SMS, or a printed QR.

FAQ

• How do I track clicks on a URL for free?

  Shorten it with zip1.io, share the short link, and open /stats/<slug> to watch the clicks. No account, no monthly cap.

• What does the click tracker record?

  Total clicks, unique visitors (dedup by IP), country, referrer, browser, OS, and last-click time — plus a bot-vs-human tag. Not the visitor's identity.

• Does it use cookies or a tracking script?

  No. Clicks are counted server-side at redirect. No cookie on the visitor, no JavaScript tag on the destination, nothing to add to your site.

• Can I export the click data?

  Yes — CSV, JSON, XLSX, or XML at /export/<slug>/<format>, with no paid tier gating it.

• Can I track a link to a site I don't own?

  Yes. You only need the destination URL. zip1.io counts clicks on the short link no matter who owns the destination — and, unlike Google Analytics, even when there's no page to host a tracking tag (email, SMS, a DM, a printed QR).

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