Design a URL Shortener — Roadmap Step & Resources
A classic starter problem covering encoding schemes, storage and redirection at scale
- Level: advanced
- Estimated time: 1 days
- Roadmap: System Design
Before this step
Mini projects
- Whiteboard a full design for a URL shortener handling 100M links/day
Interview questions
- How would you generate unique short codes without collisions at scale?
Study resources
- Designing a URL Shortening service like TinyURL (Article) — The System Design Primer's own worked example of designing a URL shortener.
- System Design: URL Shortener (Video) — A practical, whiteboard-style walkthrough of designing a URL shortening service.
Part of
- System Design Interview Practice & Case Studies — section
- System Design roadmap — the full learning path