Paste a link and this link cleaner strips the tracking parameters and redirects, in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
What was taken out
Every web address is made of the same five parts. A URL cleaner only ever touches one of them.
The query string is the part after the ?, defined in RFC 3986 as a set of
name=value pairs joined by &. Some of those pairs are load
bearing: variant=42 decides which jacket you see. Others were added purely
so that whoever sent you the link can recognise the click later. In the example above,
variant=42 stays and utm_source and fbclid go.
Adding those extra pairs is called link decoration. It is how attribution survives a copy and paste: even if you strip cookies, the identifier travels inside the address itself, so the destination site learns which campaign, which advertiser and often which specific person clicked.
Not all tracking sits in the query string. Some links do not point at the destination at
all - they point at an interstitial that records the click and then forwards you.
l.facebook.com/l.php?u=, google.com/url?q=,
youtube.com/redirect and Outlook's Safe Links all work this way. The cleaner
reads the real address out of the wrapper and hands it back directly, so the extra hop
never happens.
Over 300 parameter names and eight prefix patterns, plus 20 redirect wrappers. These are the ones you will actually run into:
| Parameter | Set by | What it identifies |
|---|---|---|
utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, utm_content |
Google Analytics | The campaign, channel and creative that sent the visit. Named after Urchin, the analytics company Google bought in 2005. |
gclid, gbraid, wbraid |
Google Ads | One specific ad click, used to match it to a later conversion. |
msclkid |
Microsoft Advertising | The equivalent click identifier for Bing search ads. |
fbclid, mibextid |
Meta | The click, tied back to a Facebook profile by the Meta pixel on the landing page. |
igshid, igsh |
The share that produced the link, which chains the sender to the opener. | |
ttclid |
TikTok | The TikTok ad click. |
twclid, s, t |
X (Twitter) | The ad click, and the surface a post was shared from. |
si |
YouTube, Spotify | Which share a play came from. Added automatically by the Share button. |
li_fat_id, trk |
The ad click and the placement inside LinkedIn. | |
rdt_cid, share_id |
The Reddit ad click and the individual share event. | |
mc_cid, mc_eid |
Mailchimp | The campaign and, importantly, the individual recipient of the email. |
mkt_tok |
Adobe Marketo Engage | An encoded token identifying the recipient of a marketing email. |
_hsenc, _hsmi, __hstc |
HubSpot | The contact record and the email that carried the link. |
_kx |
Klaviyo | The subscriber profile. |
tag, ascsubtag, ref_ |
Amazon Associates | The affiliate who earns the commission, plus your path through the site. |
irclickid, cjevent, sscid |
Impact, CJ Affiliate, ShareASale | Affiliate network click identifiers. |
spm, aff_trace_key |
AliExpress, Temu | The exact page module clicked, and the affiliate. |
pk_*, mtm_* |
Matomo | The self-hosted analytics equivalent of the utm set. |
s_cid, ef_id, sc_cid |
Adobe Analytics | Campaign attribution inside the Adobe stack. |
obOrigUrl, tblci |
Outbrain, Taboola | Which recommendation widget slot was clicked. |
yclid, ysclid, _openstat |
Yandex | Yandex Direct click identifiers. |
epik, ScCid |
Pinterest, Snapchat | Platform click identifiers. |
The full list, with a plain-English note on each, is in the tracking parameter glossary.
Paste a list of links one per line and each is cleaned separately, in order. Useful for a newsletter draft or a set of product links before they go into a spreadsheet.
Install it - Android and Chrome offer Install, iOS offers Add to Home Screen from the share menu. It then opens like an app, works with no signal, and on Android it joins the system share sheet, so you can share a link from any app straight into the cleaner instead of copying and pasting.
Delete everything from the ? onwards and open what is left. If the page still
loads correctly, the parameters were tracking. If it breaks, add them back one at a time -
the one that fixes it is doing real work and should stay.
Some platforms need more than parameter deletion, so they have their own page explaining exactly what happens and why.
Cuts a 200-character product URL down to
amazon.com/dp/PRODUCTID, dropping the affiliate tag,
the ref_ path segment and the session parameters.
Shortens youtube.com/watch?v= to youtu.be, removes the
si share identifier, keeps your timestamp and unwraps description
redirects.
Unwraps l.facebook.com/l.php?u= and strips the fbclid
click identifier along with the __cft__ surface parameters.
Extracts the real destination from google.com/url?q= and reverses
Google AMP addresses back to the publisher's own page.
X and Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, LinkedIn, Spotify, Pinterest, Snapchat, AliExpress, Temu, eBay, Etsy, Walmart, Best Buy, the Google Play Store, Medium, Shopify storefronts, Outlook Safe Links, Steam's link filter and Mailchimp, HubSpot, Klaviyo and Marketo campaign links.
Send a friend a link with mc_eid still attached and you have handed
the sender's mailing list your friend's click, recorded against your subscriber
record.
A clean URL shows the domain and the page. People can see where they are going before they tap, which is the oldest anti-phishing habit there is.
A pasted utm_source=facebook link makes every visitor who follows it
look like Facebook traffic. Cleaning shared links keeps the attribution real.
Unwrapping a redirect removes an entire round trip to an interstitial that exists only to log the click.
Firefox strips a short list of parameters in Enhanced Tracking Protection's strict mode. Safari removes some in Private Browsing and in Mail. Brave filters others, and extensions such as ClearURLs and uBlock Origin go further. All of them act on links you click. None of them touches the link sitting in your clipboard that you are about to paste into a message - which is exactly the moment a URL cleaner is for.
Under the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive a click identifier that can be tied to a person is personal data, which is why consent banners in the EU increasingly cover link decoration alongside cookies. Removing the parameter before you share the link sidesteps the question entirely: there is nothing left to consent to.
These get confused constantly, and picking the wrong one is how people end up with more tracking than they started with.
| Tool | What it does | What it does not do |
|---|---|---|
| URL cleaner | Removes tracking parameters and unwraps redirects. The destination and the domain stay the same. | Does not shorten the domain, and cannot see inside a short link. |
| Link shortener Bitly, TinyURL, t.co |
Replaces the address with a new one on the shortener's domain. | Does not remove tracking - it adds its own click logging and hides the destination. |
| Redirect checker | Follows the hops and shows you where a link ends up. | Does not give you a clean link, and has to fetch the URL from a server to work. |
| URL decoder | Turns percent-encoding such as %3A back into readable characters. |
Removes nothing - the tracking is still there, just easier to read. |
| Browser protections Safari, Firefox, Brave |
Strip a short list of parameters from links you click. | Do not touch a link you are about to send to someone else. |
An honest url cleaner has to say where it is the wrong answer.
tag or
irclickid removes the creator's commission. That is a choice, not a
neutral act - make it deliberately.
This is why the cleaner works from a blocklist rather than a whitelist: a parameter is removed because it is recognised as tracking, and anything unfamiliar is left exactly where it was.
Every URL cleaner on the web says it does not store your links. Here is how to confirm it on this one rather than take it on trust.
Analytics on this site is Microsoft Clarity, and in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland it does not load at all unless you accept it. It never sees the contents of the box - that text never leaves the page. The privacy policy has the detail, and the site is run by one person you can email at admin@linkcleaner.online.
A URL cleaner is a tool that removes the tracking parameters from a web address without changing which page it opens. It deletes the part after the question mark that identifies the campaign, the advertiser and often the individual click, and it replaces redirect wrappers with the destination they point at. The page you land on stays the same; only the tracking is gone.
A URL cleaner removes tracking and gives you back the same destination on the same domain. A link shortener such as Bitly or TinyURL replaces the address with a new one on its own domain and adds its own click tracking. A shortener makes a link shorter and more tracked; a cleaner makes it shorter and less tracked.
Extra data appended to a URL after the ? symbol, such as
utm_source, utm_campaign, fbclid or
gclid. It does not change which page you land on. It tells the
destination site and the advertising network who sent you, which campaign you came
from, and often which individual click you were. Adding them is known as link
decoration.
Paste the URL into the box at the top of this page. The cleaned version appears
immediately, with a list of every parameter that was removed. Press
Copy. By hand: delete everything from the ? onwards,
then check the page still works.
Yes. It is free, requires no account, and works in any browser on desktop or mobile with nothing to install. The site is paid for by the two sponsor placements, which are labelled as such.
No. Cleaning happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript. The URL you paste is never sent to a server and is never logged or stored. You can verify it: load the site once, turn off your network, and the cleaner still works - because there is nothing for it to contact. See the privacy policy.
It should not. The cleaner works from a blocklist: a parameter is removed only when it is known tracking, and anything it does not recognise is left alone. Parameters a page genuinely needs - a YouTube video ID, an Amazon product ID, a search query, a page number, a product variant - are preserved. Use Open to test the cleaned link before you share it.
Yes. Paste a list of links, one per line, and each line is cleaned separately. The result comes back in the same order, ready to copy as a block.
Not fully. A shortener keeps the destination on its own server, so the only way to discover it is to request the link - which would mean sending your URL somewhere, and this tool does not do that. Short links are flagged in the result so you know the address is still hiding something. Open it, then clean the page you land on.
Partly. Firefox strips a short list of parameters in Enhanced Tracking Protection strict mode, Safari removes some in Private Browsing, and Brave filters others. All of them act on links you click, not on a link in your clipboard that you are about to send to someone, and each covers a much shorter list.
Yes. It is a progressive web app: Android and desktop browsers offer Install, and iOS supports Add to Home Screen. Once installed it works offline, and on Android it appears in the share sheet, so you can send a link from any app straight to the cleaner.
Because X's own links usually produce no preview in chat apps and fxtwitter serves the same post with a working one. It is the only case where the domain is changed rather than just cleaned, it is labelled in the result, and there is a button to put x.com back.
One parameter per post, what sets it and whether deleting it breaks anything: