Dub
Bitly with deeper attribution; self-hosting means recreating half a startup's infrastructure.
Technical Profile & Specs
verified 2026-08-10
- Cost
- $0 / forever (Open Source)
- License
- AGPL-3.0
- Hosting Model
- Local or hosted (your machine or their cloud)
- Platforms
- webself-hostedself-host, real ops
- Installation
- Hosted signup, or a source deployment assembled across Vercel, MySQL/PlanetScale, Tinybird, Upstash and Cloudflare R2/AWS
- Operational Setup
- Self-hosting is not one Compose file: the official guide requires accounts, credentials and configuration across GitHub, Tinybird, Upstash, MySQL/PlanetScale, Vercel and Cloudflare or AWS.
- Where Your Data Lives
- Dub Cloud stores links, users and analytics in Dub's infrastructure; the documented self-hosted stack keeps link/user metadata in PlanetScale-compatible MySQL, click events in Tinybird/ClickHouse, redirect cache and jobs in Upstash Redis/QStash, and assets in Cloudflare R2 or AWS.
- The Catch / Trade-off
- Dub has richer attribution, but self-hosting depends on several external databases, queues, analytics, storage, email, and deployment services and still lacks Bitly's enterprise support and governance.
Replaces 1 paid app
up to $35/mo ($420/yr) in subscriptions
Dub FAQ
Common questions
Is Dub free and open source?+
Dub is an open-source tool licensed under AGPL-3.0 that runs on local or hosted. Bitly with deeper attribution; self-hosting means recreating half a startup's infrastructure.
What paid software does Dub replace?+
Dub serves as a free replacement for 1 paid SaaS application: Bitly, saving up to $35/month ($420/year) in subscription bills.
How do you install and set up Dub?+
Installation: Hosted signup, or a source deployment assembled across Vercel, MySQL/PlanetScale, Tinybird, Upstash and Cloudflare R2/AWS. Setup notes: Self-hosting is not one Compose file: the official guide requires accounts, credentials and configuration across GitHub, Tinybird, Upstash, MySQL/PlanetScale, Vercel and Cloudflare or AWS.
What is the catch or trade-off with Dub?+
Dub has richer attribution, but self-hosting depends on several external databases, queues, analytics, storage, email, and deployment services and still lacks Bitly's enterprise support and governance.