TinyURL VS LayerGrab

TinyURL's answer

TinyURL has been running continuously since January 2002, which makes it the first notable URL shortening service and one of the oldest still operating. For a link shortener that longevity is the product, not trivia: a short link is only useful for as long as it still resolves, and links created here don't expire.

Three things set it apart day to day:

• Human and bot clicks are reported separately. Most shorteners report raw click totals that quietly include crawlers and link-preview bots, so reported traffic reads higher than the real audience. Separating them means the numbers can be trusted for attribution.
• Destinations stay editable after a link is published. A link already printed on packaging or posted to social can be repointed without reissuing it.
• A permanent free tier, not a trial - 30 links a month, one branded domain, links that never expire.

LayerGrab's answer:

LayerGrab focuses on recovering editable structure from a flat image. You can extract one named object, such as a person, product, headline, prop or price tag, or split the complete image into up to 17 transparent layers. The returned layers are completed and the background is filled after removals, so the result is usable for real design work instead of a rough cutout.

TinyURL's answer

Three practical reasons, depending on what you need:

• You want attribution you can trust. Analytics cover clicks over time, referrer, geography, device, OS, browser and language, retained for two years, with bot traffic separated out.
• You want your own brand on the link. Bring your own domain or subdomain on any plan, with up to three branded domains on paid tiers.
• You want links that outlive the campaign. Twenty-four years of continuous operation, and a free tier that doesn't expire, matter when a link is printed on something you can't reprint.

Pricing starts free and goes to $9/month billed annually ($11 month-to-month) for 125 links a month with unlimited tracked clicks. Bulk plans handle 50,000 links a month for agencies and high-volume senders, and there's a REST API for automating the whole lifecycle.

LayerGrab's answer:

Choose LayerGrab when you have a flat reference image but need editable parts. It handles both a focused extraction and a whole-image layer breakdown, names the layers, completes the content behind removed elements, and exports transparent PNG, ZIP or layered PSD. It is useful for adapting posters and banners, separating people or products, breaking down illustrations and infographics, and reworking AI-generated images in Photoshop, Figma or Sketch.

TinyURL's answer

• Marketing teams running campaigns across several channels who need per-link attribution rather than a single lumped traffic figure
• Social media managers and creators working inside character limits, who want a branded link rather than a generic one
• Agencies managing links for multiple clients, each on its own branded domain
• Developers automating link creation and analytics through the REST API
• Enterprises needing SLA-backed uptime and compliance support
• Educational Institutions
• The healthcare industry

It also has a long tail of individual users who simply need a link shortened, which the free tier covers without an account upgrade.

LayerGrab's answer:

LayerGrab is for designers, illustrators, marketers, photo editors and creators who need to reuse an image without the original source file. Typical users work with posters, social banners, product photos, infographics, character art, people and objects, or AI-generated images that need further editing.

TinyURL's answer

Kevin Gilbertson, a web developer, launched TinyURL in January 2002 so he could link directly to newsgroup postings, which at the time had long and unwieldy addresses. It was the first notable URL shortening service, and it arrived years before shortening became a category.

Twitter used TinyURL as its default shortener until May 2009, which put it in front of a mass audience during the period when character limits made short links essential.

Since then it's grown from a single-purpose utility into a link management platform: branded domains, click analytics with two years of retained history, editable destinations, QR codes, bulk creation and a REST API. It now serves over 4.4 million registered users and has created billions of links.

LayerGrab's answer:

LayerGrab started from a common design problem: a useful reference image is available, but the original layered file is gone. The project combines object extraction, whole-image decomposition and background completion so a flat image can become a practical editable starting point again. The web app and Photoshop, Figma and Sketch plugins make the workflow fit both quick experiments and production design.

TinyURL's answer

TinyURL is a cloud-hosted web application, accessible from any browser with no install. Its public interface is a REST API (v2.4.2) published as an OpenAPI 3.0 specification and authenticated with bearer tokens, covering link creation, editing, destination changes, analytics retrieval and bulk batch processing.

LayerGrab's answer:

The project is a TypeScript monorepo with a shared LayerGrab core and web and plugin clients. The repository includes a Next.js web app plus Photoshop UXP, Figma and Sketch plugins. The decomposition workflow uses an image-capable model with layer decomposition enabled, then returns transparent PNG layers and a completed background; the current plugin workflow supports bring-your-own apimodels.app API keys.

TinyURL's answer

Twitter used TinyURL as its default URL shortener until May 2009.

LayerGrab's answer:

LayerGrab is an early-stage product and does not publish a customer list yet. It is built for designers, illustrators, marketers, photo editors and creators who need to recover editable layers from flat images. The web app and plugins are available for users to try at https://layergrab.com/.