Short.io alternative with euro pricing and Amsterdam hosting

If you are looking for a Short.io alternative, you probably like what Short.io does well: branded short links, a generous free plan and QR codes on every link. This page compares it with EUQR on the points European teams ask about most. What you pay in euro, where clicks are processed, how links and codes are bundled, and what happens to your links when you stop paying. All Short.io facts below were checked on its own pricing and privacy pages on 28 October 2026.

EUQR is a European service from Nexo IV Grupo SL. EUQR's URL shortener runs on the qreu.eu domain, and scan data and short-link data are hosted in Amsterdam.

Short.io alternative at a glance

• Price and currency: the plan cards on the Short.io pricing page show "$..." placeholders, so the amounts come from its comparison table: Hobby $5, Pro $18, Team $48 and Enterprise $148 per month, in US dollars by default, with 17 percent off for annual billing. EUQR starts at €0.99 per month (Starter) and €9 per month (Pro), excluding VAT.
• Free plan: Short.io Free gives 1 user, 5 custom domains, 1,000 branded links and 50,000 tracked clicks per month. EUQR Free covers static QR codes only; short links start on Starter.
• Trial: every paid Short.io plan has a 7-day free trial. EUQR has no trial, and you can cancel any month.
• Hosting: Short.io runs a US cluster around Dallas and an EU cluster on AWS in Frankfurt. EUQR has one setup, hosted in Amsterdam.
• Custom domains: Short.io includes them from the free plan. EUQR offers your own domain only on Enterprise, through white-label.
• After cancelling: Short.io moves your account to the free plan. EUQR shows your branded Recovery Page for 90 days, then a generic EUQR page.

Where clicks are processed: one cluster in Amsterdam

The Short.io privacy policy, last updated September 2026, describes two clusters. The US cluster is moving from Amazon Web Services to bare-metal servers in three data centres around Dallas, Texas, run by Hivelocity, Limestone Networks and Interserver. The EU cluster runs on AWS in Frankfurt. Cloudflare sits in front for delivery and DDoS protection, and encrypted backups of the US cluster go to Wasabi. Transfers out of the EU rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.

That is a serious setup, and the Frankfurt cluster is a real option for European customers. EUQR keeps it simpler. Scan data and short-link data have one location: Amsterdam. There is no cluster to pick, no migration to follow and no second region to document in your records of processing. Payments run through Stripe, as they do at Short.io, so we do not claim that every byte stays in the EU.

What EUQR keeps is narrow by design. It never stores raw IP addresses, sets no tracking cookies and reports clicks as aggregate counts by country, device, browser and language on the analytics dashboard. Short.io's policy lists IP address, browser type, device information and cookie identifiers as technical data, and gives no fixed retention period. For the wider case for keeping links in Europe, read our page on a European URL shortener.

Links and codes in one euro plan

EUQR sizes its plans by how many short links and dynamic QR codes you manage. Starter at €0.99 per month includes 50 short links and 10 dynamic QR codes. Pro at €9 per month includes 250 links, 50 codes, 4 seats and 90 days of analytics. Business at €19 covers 1,000 links and 200 codes, and Agency at €49 covers 5,000 links and 1,000 codes. The pricing page lists unlimited scans and names no click cap for links.

Short.io meters two things on its lower tiers: branded links and tracked clicks. Free stops at 1,000 links and 50,000 tracked clicks per month, Hobby at 2,500 links and 100,000 clicks. Its FAQ says links keep working past the click limit, but on Free you only see detailed statistics for the first 50,000 clicks. Pro and above have no link or click ceiling.

Take a theatre company with three venues. Each season it sends around 120 ticket links through newsletters, social posts and text messages, and prints a QR code on every poster. On EUQR Pro it pays €9 per month or €90 per year for 250 links and 50 codes, with four colleagues in one account. Each link gets its own slug on qreu.eu, an optional expiry date for the last night of a run, and campaign tags from the built-in UTM builder. On Short.io the same team could stay on Free or Hobby with its own domain, and would keep an eye on the monthly click meter around a sold-out premiere.

What happens when you stop paying

Links outlive budgets. A poster stays on a wall for months, an old newsletter stays in an inbox for years. What matters is what a visitor sees once the subscription behind that link has ended.

Short.io's pricing page says that if you cancel, your account automatically moves to the free plan, and that a new plan's limits take effect immediately. For a small account that is generous. For a large one, the free plan's limits on links, domains and visible statistics apply from that moment.

EUQR uses a Recovery Page. After cancellation, your dynamic codes and short links show your own branded Recovery Page for 90 days, then a generic EUQR page. Nobody scanning an old poster lands on a 404. Static QR codes from the free generator are not affected at all. Our TinyURL comparison shows how another popular shortener handles the same moment.

Where Short.io still makes sense

Short.io is the better pick in several cases, and we would rather say so here.

• You want your own short domain without an enterprise contract. Short.io includes 5 custom domains on Free and 10 on Pro; EUQR offers a custom domain only on Enterprise.
• You need more than 5,000 links. Short.io Pro has no link ceiling, while EUQR Agency stops at 5,000 links and higher volumes go to Enterprise.
• You want a free plan for short links. EUQR's free plan covers static QR codes only.
• You want to test paid features first. Short.io offers a 7-day trial; EUQR does not.

EUQR also does not offer geo-routing or device routing, A/B tests, bulk QR code generation or frames around codes. If any of those is a must-have, choose a tool that has it.

Who each one is for

Choose Short.io if custom domains are central to your brand, if you run tens of thousands of links, or if a free plan for links matters more to you than a single hosting location. Its Frankfurt cluster gives European customers a regional option.

Choose EUQR if you want to pay in euro by the month, keep short links and QR codes in one plan, and name one hosting location, Amsterdam, in your privacy documentation. It suits marketing teams, venues, agencies and small businesses that measure campaigns without cookies and want a Recovery Page instead of a dead link.

Switching is mostly a matter of recreating your active links on qreu.eu and updating where they appear. QR codes already printed with a Short.io link keep pointing there, so keep that link active until the print run is gone. For other comparisons, see the Bitly alternative and the Rebrandly comparison, or check every plan on the EUQR pricing page.