# The Making of a Scalable URL Shortener

DevFeed: [The Making of a Scalable URL Shortener](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-making-of-a-scalable-url-shortener-38369.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://cyrilmottier.com/posts/2025/the-making-of-a-scalable-url-shortener/>)

Author: Cyril Mottier

Published: 2025-02-18T10:57:54Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Cyril Mottier Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/cyril-mottier-blog.md>)

Topics: [Code](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code.md>), [Amazon Web Services](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/aws.md>), [DynamoDB](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/dynamodb.md>), [Go Language](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/go-language.md>), [Requirements](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/requirements.md>), [Database](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/database.md>)

Tags: [article](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/article.md>), [aws](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/aws.md>), [build](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/build.md>), [distributed-system](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/distributed-system.md>), [dynamodb](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/dynamodb.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [go](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/go.md>), [redirection](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/redirection.md>), [requirements](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/requirements.md>), [retry](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/retry.md>), [scale](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scale.md>)

## AI overview

The article describes the design of a custom URL shortener built with AWS Lambda, AWS DynamoDB, and Go. It outlines requirements such as fast redirection, short URLs, batch creation, and optional expiration, then examines slug-generation strategies including randomized slugs, incremental counters, and permutation of the slug space.

## Source excerpt

This article was initially published as a thread of posts on X. For the sake of readability and long-term availability, it is now available here as a single-page article. Post 1 A few months ago, I built a custom URL shortener. Quick refresher: a URL shortener does two things: Creates short URLs that map to long URLs Redirects short URL requests to those long URLs. Designing this was a fantastic engineering challenge. Here's a look at my design process!