Short.io is a great pick for marketing teams that need branded links. Go2 is built for engineers shipping AI agents — the click attribution, MCP server, and edge-first API are first-class, and the free tier ships the full developer surface.
Short.io is a marketer-leaning shortener with a strong custom-domain story — branded short URLs, click analytics, deep links. They charge per click rather than per link, which is friendly for low-traffic teams. The product is solid; what it doesn't have is an MCP server, per-run agent attribution, or a way to self-host on your own infra.
| Feature | Go2 | Short.io |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier links | 100/mo | Unlimited |
| Free tier clicks | 5K/mo | 1K/mo |
| Cheapest paid plan | $9/mo | $24/mo |
| Free custom domain | 1 | |
| API on Free | ||
| Agent attribution | ||
| MCP server | ||
| Per-run agent attribution | ||
| agent_id, run_id, actor_id schema | ||
| Agent-runs dashboard | ||
| Edge runtime | ||
| Cloudflare Workers redirect | ||
| p50 redirect latency | <10ms | ~30-50ms |
| AGPL self-host | ||
| Developer surface | ||
| REST API | ||
| OpenAPI spec | ||
| TypeScript SDK | Community | |
| Webhooks | Pro | Pro |
| Audit logs | Business | Enterprise |
Pick Short.io if
Pick Go2 if
Yes. The categories are different jobs — Short.io is marketer-shaped (branded domains as the headline feature, click-based billing), Go2 is engineer-shaped (MCP server, REST API on Free, agent attribution as the headline feature). If you're shipping an AI agent that mints URLs, Go2 is purpose-built; Short.io can do the redirects but you'd build the attribution layer yourself.
Yes — every Free user gets one custom domain with automatic SSL via Cloudflare. Pro adds 5 domains, Business adds 25. Short.io's Free tier doesn't include a branded domain; you'd need their $24/mo Personal plan.
No. Short.io has a REST API but no MCP server. Go2 publishes @go2/mcp-server on npm and runs a remote Streamable-HTTP transport at mcp.go2.gg/mcp — install in Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, ChatGPT custom GPTs, or Perplexity in one paste.
Sometimes. If your agent generates 50 links/mo with 100 clicks each, Short.io's pay-per-click model can be slightly cheaper than Go2 Pro at $9/mo. Once you cross ~1K clicks/mo, Go2 is cheaper, and the developer surface (MCP, OpenAPI, agent attribution, AGPL) is the deciding factor anyway.
No. Short.io's click events have a referrer + UA + geo, same as Bitly. There's no concept of agent_id, run_id, or actor_id — you'd need to encode all of that into the destination URL as query params and parse them out yourself, which only works for clicks that don't strip the params. Go2's attribution survives re-sharing because the agent context lives on the link itself.
Yes — Go2 is AGPL-3.0 and the entire stack runs on your Cloudflare account: Workers + D1 + KV + R2. One wrangler deploy. Short.io is closed-source SaaS only.
Other comparisons