Introducing WarpLink: A Firebase Dynamic Links Alternative for Developers

TL;DR: WarpLink is a deep linking platform that gives developers and small teams deep links, deferred deep links, install attribution, and click analytics with open source SDKs, sub-10ms edge redirects, and transparent pricing starting at $0/month. It was built as a direct replacement for Firebase Dynamic Links.

Deep Linking Has a Pricing Problem

When Google deprecated Firebase Dynamic Links in August 2025, thousands of mobile developers lost their deep linking solution overnight. The natural next step was to evaluate alternatives. What most developers found was discouraging.

Enterprise deep linking platforms start at $75,000 per year. Some charge per link. Others hide pricing behind "contact sales" forms that lead to multi-week procurement cycles. For a solo developer shipping a side project, or a five-person startup watching every dollar, these tools might as well not exist.

The underlying technology is well-understood. Operating systems already support Universal Links and App Links natively. The hard parts are handling edge cases across platforms, preserving context through app installs, and making attribution accurate. But the pricing model for solving these problems is broken. Deep linking became a line item that only well-funded companies could afford.

We built WarpLink as a Firebase Dynamic Links alternative that any developer can afford. Not just the ones with enterprise budgets.

What WarpLink Does: A Deep Linking Platform for Developers

WarpLink is a deep linking platform built for developers and small teams. It handles the entire link lifecycle: creating smart links, routing users to the right destination, preserving context through app installs, tracking which links drive engagement, and giving you the analytics to understand what's working.

Here's what that looks like in practice.

Capability	What It Does
Deep links	Single URL that routes to the right destination on iOS, Android, or web
Deferred deep links	Preserves link context through the app install flow
Install attribution	Connects app installs to the link clicks that drove them
Click analytics	Real-time tracking with accurate deduplication
Social previews	Rich Open Graph previews for bots, fast redirects for users
Open source SDKs	MIT-licensed iOS, Android, and React Native SDKs with zero dependencies
REST API + MCP	Full programmatic access for automation and AI agent integration

Deep Links

A WarpLink deep link is a single URL that works everywhere. When someone taps it, WarpLink checks their device and routes them to the right place. If your app is installed, the user lands on the exact screen you intended. If not, they go to the app store or a fallback URL you define. No broken experiences, no dead ends.

This works across iOS (Universal Links), Android (App Links), and the mobile web. One link, every platform. For a deeper look at how deep linking works under the hood, see our complete guide to deep linking.

Deferred Deep Links

A deferred deep link preserves the intended destination across an app install. When a user clicks a link, installs the app, and opens it for the first time, a deferred deep link routes them to the original content instead of the home screen.

To see why this matters, consider the common scenario: a user taps a link to a specific product in your app, but they don't have the app installed yet. They land in the app store, install your app, open it for the first time, and... land on the home screen. The context is gone. Every developer who's built a sharing flow knows this frustration.

Deferred deep links solve this. WarpLink remembers where the link was pointing across the entire install flow. The user installs your app, opens it, and lands on the exact product page they originally clicked. The context survives the install.

For referral programs, marketing campaigns, and content sharing, this is the difference between a user who converts and a user who churns on first open.

Install Attribution

A user saw a link somewhere, tapped it, installed your app. But which link? Which campaign? Which channel?

WarpLink connects the dots between link clicks and app installs using a privacy-respecting attribution cascade. It starts with the most deterministic signal (referrer matching), falls back to device identifiers (IDFV on iOS, no IDFA required), and uses probabilistic fingerprinting as a last resort.

No advertising identifiers. No ATT consent prompts. No invasive browser fingerprinting. Your users' privacy stays intact, and you still get accurate attribution data.

Click Analytics

Every link you create comes with real-time analytics: clicks over time, unique vs. total clicks, device and OS breakdown, country distribution, and referrer sources. You can see which links are driving engagement and which channels are performing.

Click counting is accurate by design. Deduplication happens in the database during batch inserts using an atomic query, not at the edge where eventual consistency could skew your numbers. When your analytics say 1,000 unique clicks, that's exactly what happened.

Why We Built It This Way

A deep linking platform needs to be fast, accurate, and affordable. Getting all three required specific technical decisions. Here's what's under the hood and why it matters to you.

Edge-First Redirects

Every link click resolves entirely at the edge. There's no round-trip to an origin server. When a user taps a WarpLink URL, the nearest edge node reads the link configuration, parses the user agent, determines the right destination, and returns a redirect. The click event is logged asynchronously so it never slows down the redirect.

The result: sub-10ms redirect latency, globally, across 300+ cities. Your users experience instant redirects regardless of where they are.

Why does this matter? Because redirect speed directly impacts conversion. Every millisecond between a tap and the destination is a chance for the user to lose interest or close the tab. At the edge, WarpLink resolves links faster than most websites load their first byte.

In-Database Click Deduplication

Most platforms deduplicate clicks at the edge using probabilistic data structures. This is fast but introduces eventual consistency. Two edge nodes might count the same click twice if they haven't synced yet.

WarpLink takes a different approach. Click events are batched and inserted into the database using an atomic query that computes uniqueness at write time. Every click is evaluated against the full click history, not a local cache. The tradeoff is a small delay in analytics (seconds, not minutes). The benefit is perfect accuracy.

If you're making decisions based on your analytics (which campaigns to invest in, which channels to scale), accuracy isn't optional. It's the whole point.

When you share a link on Twitter, Slack, iMessage, or any platform that generates previews, a bot fetches the URL to extract Open Graph tags. Most deep linking services return a redirect, which means the bot either follows it to the app store (useless preview) or gets nothing.

WarpLink detects bot user agents and serves full HTML with Open Graph and Twitter Card tags. Real users get a fast redirect. Bots get a rich preview with your title, description, and image. Your shared links look great in every chat app and social feed without any extra work.

Privacy-First Attribution

Your users shouldn't pay a privacy cost for your analytics. WarpLink's attribution is designed to be accurate without being invasive.

IP addresses are hashed before storage. Raw IPs are never persisted. Device fingerprinting uses standard signals (screen size, OS version, locale) without accessing browser storage, canvas rendering, or other invasive techniques. On iOS, the SDK uses IDFV (Identifier for Vendor), which is scoped to your app and exempt from ATT consent prompts.

The attribution cascade is transparent: referrer matching first (deterministic), then device ID matching (deterministic), then fingerprint matching (probabilistic). You always know which method attributed each install.

Open Source Deep Linking SDKs

All three SDKs are MIT-licensed with zero third-party dependencies. You can audit every line of code, fork if you need to, and never worry about a transitive dependency introducing a vulnerability or license conflict.

iOS is written in Swift and distributed via Swift Package Manager. It handles Universal Link routing for both cold starts (app launched from link) and warm starts (app already running), deferred deep link resolution, and install attribution. Add the package, configure your API key, and set up a deep link handler.

import WarpLink

// Initialize in your AppDelegate or App init
WarpLink.configure(apiKey: "wl_live_xxx")

// Handle deep links from Universal Links
WarpLink.handleDeepLink(url) { result in
    if case .success(let link) = result {
        navigator.push(link.path, params: link.queryParameters)
    }
}

// Check for deferred deep link after install
WarpLink.checkDeferredDeepLink { result in
    if case .success(let link) = result {
        navigator.push(link.path, params: link.queryParameters)
    }
}

Android is written in Kotlin and distributed via Maven Central. Same capabilities: App Link routing, deferred deep links, and attribution. Integrates with your existing Activity lifecycle.

import app.warplink.WarpLink

// Initialize in your Application class
WarpLink.configure(this, apiKey = "wl_live_xxx")

// Handle deep links in your Activity
WarpLink.handleDeepLink(intent.data!!) { result ->
    result.onSuccess { link ->
        navigate(link.path, link.queryParameters)
    }
}

// Check for deferred deep link after install
WarpLink.checkDeferredDeepLink { result ->
    result.onSuccess { link ->
        navigate(link.path, link.queryParameters)
    }
}

React Native is a TypeScript bridge to the native SDKs, distributed via npm. One API surface, native performance underneath.

import { WarpLink } from '@warplink/react-native';

// Initialize in your App component
WarpLink.configure({ apiKey: 'wl_live_xxx' });

// Handle deep links (cold start and warm start)
WarpLink.onDeepLink((link) => {
  navigation.navigate(link.path, link.queryParameters);
});

// Check for deferred deep link after install
const deferred = await WarpLink.checkDeferredDeepLink();
if (deferred) {
  navigation.navigate(deferred.path, deferred.queryParameters);
}

Each SDK is under 200KB with no transitive dependencies. Integration takes about 30 minutes for most apps.

What You Can Build

Here are the use cases where WarpLink makes the biggest difference.

Your users share a link to a product, article, or profile. The recipient taps it and lands directly on that content in your app, or on the web if they don't have the app. With deferred deep links enabled, even new users who install the app from that shared link land on the right content.

Referral Programs

Create unique referral links for each user. When someone signs up through a referral link, WarpLink's attribution tracks which referrer drove the install. Combined with deferred deep links, the referral context survives the entire install flow. No more "enter your referral code manually" friction.

Marketing Campaigns

Create campaign-specific links with UTM parameters. Track clicks, installs, and engagement per campaign in the analytics dashboard. Compare performance across channels (email, social, paid ads) with accurate deduplication. Know exactly which campaigns are worth scaling.

Share links that look great everywhere. Bot detection ensures rich previews on Twitter, LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, and iMessage. Real users get instant redirects to your app or web fallback. One link works for both purposes without any conditional logic on your end.

Deep Linking Pricing That Makes Sense

No sales calls. No "contact us for pricing." No per-link fees. Every plan is listed publicly, and you can upgrade or downgrade from the dashboard in seconds.

Plan	Price	Clicks/Month	Team Members	Apps
Free	$0	10,000	1	1
Starter	$19/mo	100,000	3	5
Growth	$49/mo	500,000	10	20
Scale	$99/mo	2,000,000	Unlimited	Unlimited

The free tier is genuinely free. No credit card required. No time limit. No feature gating. You get the same edge redirects, the same SDKs, the same analytics dashboard as every other plan. The only difference is volume.

One detail that matters: links never stop working. If you exceed your click limit on the free tier, your redirects keep firing. Your users never see an error page or interstitial. The analytics dashboard is gated behind an upgrade prompt at the limit, with email warnings at 50%, 80%, and 90% so you're never surprised.

When you're ready to upgrade, it takes two clicks. No migration, no downtime, no re-integration.

Full API and MCP Server

Everything you can do in the WarpLink dashboard, you can do through the API. Create links, manage apps, pull analytics, handle team members. The API uses standard REST conventions with bearer token authentication.

curl -X POST https://api.warplink.app/v1/links \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer wl_live_xxx" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "destinationUrl": "https://yoursite.com/product/123",
    "title": "Check out this product",
    "description": "Limited edition, only 50 left in stock",
    "iosDeepLinkPath": "/product/123",
    "androidDeepLinkPath": "/product/123"
  }'

WarpLink also ships with an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, free on all plans. If you use AI coding assistants or build with AI agents, they can create links, manage apps, and pull analytics through the same API. Useful for automating link creation in CI/CD pipelines, generating campaign links from scripts, or letting agents manage your deep linking setup alongside everything else.

Getting Started with WarpLink

Here's the fastest path from zero to working deep links.

1. Create a free account. Head to warplink.app and sign up. No credit card, no trial period. Your account is free until you need more volume.

2. Create your first link. The dashboard walks you through it. Set a destination URL, add your Open Graph tags for social previews, and you have a working smart link in under a minute. Deep link fields appear once you register an app.

3. Register your app (optional). If you want deep linking into your native app, register your iOS or Android app in the dashboard. WarpLink automatically generates and hosts your Apple App Site Association and Android assetlinks.json files. No manual configuration needed.

4. Install an SDK. Add the iOS, Android, or React Native SDK to your app. Configure your API key, set up a deep link handler, and you're live. The quickstart guide covers each platform step by step.

Most developers go from signup to working deep links in under 30 minutes. The SDKs are designed to drop into existing apps without restructuring your navigation or lifecycle code. If you're migrating from Firebase Dynamic Links specifically, our migration guide walks through the process step by step.

What Comes Next

WarpLink is in active development. The platform you see today is the foundation, not the ceiling. On the roadmap: a Flutter SDK, custom domain support for branded short links, A/B testing for link destinations, and funnel analytics.

We're building WarpLink for developers who want deep linking that just works, at a price that makes sense, with tools they can trust because the code is open source.

If that sounds like what you've been looking for, create a free account and try it. No credit card required. Your first link takes 60 seconds.